Chris Sale didn't lose this game, whatever the box score tempts you to think. Six innings, two earned runs, no walks, six strikeouts. That's solid work by any standard, especially for a 37-year-old who's been one of the best redemption stories in the sport this year. Sale pitched well enough to win on plenty of nights.
He just ran into Jacob Misiorowski on a night Misiorowski wasn't giving anything back.
Six shutout innings, six strikeouts, four hits, two walks, and a fastball that kept touching triple digits. Misiorowski improved to 13-5, dropped his ERA to 1.68 and pushed his strikeout total to 216, both marks that led the majors as of that night. It was a good start against a good lineup, and it landed as a message to the guy oddsmakers have pegged as his main Cy Young rival. You don't get a cleaner résumé-builder than shutting down a first-place team while the pitcher across from you is supposedly closing the gap.
My gripe is with how people will talk about this game: they'll make it all about Misiorowski's fastball and ignore what Atlanta did to itself.
The Braves put together three hits in the third that led to two runs the hard way, a fielder's choice doing as much damage as any single. William Contreras went 4 for 4 for Milwaukee, and Luis Lara made a leaping catch at the wall that took a hit away from Matt Olson. That's the kind of game where the other team outplays you in the margins.
Look at how it ended, too. Michael Harris II's two-out single in the eighth had cut it to 2-1. Atlanta loaded the bases in that same eighth inning and came away with nothing. In the ninth, Mike Yastrzemski singled, Lane Thomas stole second as a pinch runner, and the tying run sat in scoring position. Trevor Megill struck out Ronald Acuña Jr. to end it, his 24th save in 26 opportunities.
This wasn't a fluke loss to a hot pitcher; a first-place team had real chances to tie or win the game and didn't get it done. Add in that Atlanta arrived in Milwaukee in the middle of a 2-6 stretch over its last eight games, and you've got a pattern that should worry Braves fans more than one shutout start from an ace.
This was billed as a marquee matchup between the two pitchers with baseball's best ERAs, and it delivered that kind of tension. It was also part of a bigger fight for playoff seeding between these two teams. None of that gets settled by one Friday night game. This was the opener of a three-game set, not a series-deciding blow, and there's a lot of baseball left before anyone hands out a Cy Young.
If I'm grading the takeaways from this one game: Misiorowski built his case, Sale didn't lose his, and Atlanta's bats are the ones with something to answer for.
