Chris Sale wanted the ball Sunday.
He told the Braves he was available. He believed he could perform at a high level. He repeatedly made his case to start Game 2, and even volunteered for Game 1, although he acknowledged that was probably unrealistic.
Walt Weiss still said no.
Not because Sale declared himself hurt. Not because Atlanta doubted his competitiveness. Weiss believed using Sale on Sunday would leave the Braves with a diminished version of their ace twice. He preferred one full-strength start in Game 3, with the possibility of another relief appearance later in the series.
The bullpen’s 3–2 victory gave Atlanta exactly what Weiss wanted, thanks to the heroics of Ray Kerr, Didier Fuentes, and Michael Harris II. But understanding the decision requires separating its successful result from the gamble the Braves actually made.
Let’s talk about it.
Sale believed he was ready
Sale’s confidence wasn’t empty bravado. As The AJC’s Chad Bishop detailed in September, Sale overhauled his offseason training after joining Atlanta and now throws and lifts more than he once did during the season. He also credits Atlanta’s training and strength staffs for helping keep him healthy and effective.
The results include a 2.36 ERA across three seasons with the Braves, the 2024 NL Cy Young Award and three consecutive All-Star selections.
That preparation had Sale convinced he could start Game 2, as he explained to Braves Today via conference call on Monday afternoon.
“I told (Weiss) I was available. … I really felt confident in my ability to go out there and be able to perform at a high level. I really felt confident in myself in starting Game 2.”
There were multiple discussions over the weekend about his potential game two start, with Sale declining to discuss specifics other than making the point that he made sure the point was known that he could take the ball on Sunday. “I reiterated that plenty of times to them.”
This was not a veteran pitcher asking for additional rest, despite throwing a high-intensity relief outing on Thursday night in Atlanta’s Wild Card-clinching win over Philadelphia.
In fact, he was willing to pitch on short rest, if the team would let him. “I told him I was available, even if they needed me for game one, which I knew was probably a stretch.”
The aggressive approach from Chris Sale comes because he understands the different mindset required from October baseball. “You get to this time of year and it’s all hands on deck. It’s everybody doing anything they can to get one out, to get a run, to get a base runner. And I think that that’s who our team is and that’s what everybody in here is willing to do.”
Sale said he learned that “all hands on deck” mentality in Boston, where then-manager Alex Cora used him in relief to close out the 2018 World Series. He said today he sees parallels between that championship club and these Braves.
But being available is Chris Sale’s job - he’s previously said that he’ll take the ball whenever they give it to him and throw until they take it away. It’s the organization’s job to decide when to use him.
Sale was insistent that he could pitch. Weiss needed to decide whether he should.
Atlanta feared a diminished Sale twice
The standard in MLB has been that starting pitchers get the ball every five days, which is defined as “regular rest” for a rotation.
That’s not what they’ve done with Sale.
In 2026, only two of his 27 starts have come on regular rest, and both of them were in the season’s first month. One of them was his worst outing of the year, too, allowing six runs on five hits and two walks in just four innings versus the Angels in Los Angeles.
And starting on Sunday would have been regular rest for MLB, which isn’t regular rest for Sale. And even before discussing the additional stress his Thursday relief outing put on him over a normal bullpen, Weiss didn’t think Sale would be the same effective version of himself on what would essentially be short rest.
“If you have Sale in Game 2 and Game 5, as people were screaming about, we saw it as you’re getting a diminished Chris Sale twice at that point.”
And so Weiss landed on an alternative, one that wouldn’t let Sale start twice in the series but would still keep him involved. “We wanted to get a full-strength Chris Sale, and that’s Game 3—and then possibly impacting the game in Game 5, like we saw in the Philly series.”
Two atypically short turnarounds for Sale in Games 2 and 5, versus a full-strength start in Game 3 and a possible Game 5 relief appearance.
In essence, Weiss was choosing the quality of Sale’s appearances over maximizing the number of appearances.
There’s a very simple decision tree that Weiss navigated on this one:
Start Sale in Game 2: Your best pitcher gives Atlanta its best chance to avoid a 2–0 deficit, but the Braves risk a diminished Sale in both Games 2 and 5.
OR
Hold Sale for Game 3: Atlanta gets a full-strength start at home and retains the possibility of using Sale in relief in Game 5, but the bullpen must win Game 2 to avoid sending Sale into an elimination game.
But holding Sale wasn’t without risk. Weiss was willing to accept greater risk Sunday in exchange for what he believed would be a better version of Sale later.
The bullpen created the best-case scenario
Here’s Weiss from Monday, explaining how this worked out for Atlanta:
“We won the bullpen game, and now we have a fresh Chris Sale ready to go.”
But here’s the risk part: he didn’t know it was going to work. And even during the game, he was trying to figure out how to piece it together from the pieces he had.
Weiss had a deliberate overall strategy, not a predetermined route through 27 outs. Some players outperformed expectations - Ray Kerr opening with 2.2 scoreless, Suarez escaping the game’s highest-leverage situation, and Fuentes giving 3.2 with just one run allowed. Some players were disappointing, like Grant Holmes and Dylan Lee combining for just four outs.
But Weiss trusted the bullpen and they improvised their way through 27 outs.
Weiss expected approximately two innings from Fuentes and two from Iglesias. Instead, Fuentes pitched so well that he forced the plan to change.
“I just assumed it’d probably be two and two. But Didi was throwing the ball so well, I didn’t want to mess with that.”
Weiss constructed the gamble. The bullpen made it look brilliant.
Good outcome or good decision?
Something that we’ve talked about a lot on Braves Today is the idea of the decision being a good or bad one at the time you made it, not after it’s resolved and you can answer with the benefit of hindsight.
Because there was a lot of risk for Atlanta here — drop the bullpen game on Sunday, and you return home down 0-2, and LA has three opportunities to win just one game to end your season. And if you lost on Tuesday in game three, the season ends with you taking the ball out of the hands of Tyler Mahle, who was your second-best starter down the stretch and who would likely have started game three had Sale gotten the ball on Sunday.
Weiss didn’t know the Dodgers would go 0-for-8 with runners in scoring position on Sunday, or that Atlanta would knock Blake Snell out of the game in the 4th at 90 pitches, or that Fuentes would go 3.2 innings.
But he did know a few things going into that decision:
The bullpen has been Atlanta’s strength this season, with Sale explaining on Monday that “We’re not here without our bullpen. Anybody that’s watched the Atlanta Braves play at all this year knows our bullpen has stepped up massively.”
Fuentes wasn’t used in game one, and neither was Suarez. That bullpen was not only the team’s strength, but it would be as close to full strength as it could be.
And Weiss also knew more about Sale’s recovery than the rest of us did - while Sale’s confidence in his ability to perform was relevant, it wasn’t going to decide what they did here. The team knows better than anyone the caliber of his “stuff” on normal rest versus an extra day or two, and that played into the decision by Weiss.
“We know our club pretty well, I would think better than most. […] We wanted to get a full-strength Chris Sale, and that’s game three. We didn’t wanna have a diminished Chris Sale twice; it just didn’t make sense to us.”
Now the gamble’s gotta pay off
Chris Sale now gets the start that the team gambled on - he’s at extra rest for game three, at home, in a tied series.
But the fact that he outdueled Tuesday’s opposing starter, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, in a complete-game shutout last month means absolutely nothing to Sale. “What you did yesterday means nothing in this game for today or tomorrow.”
“I’m just preparing for another grind. I’m preparing for another battle.”
And this series is now, essentially, a best-of-three, with Atlanta holding de facto home-field advantage by virtue of the next two games being in Truist Park. They have a chance to shock the world, and have narrowed the odds somewhat since last Saturday.
Per MLB’s Sarah Langs, teams that go home in the 2-2-1 Division Series format with a road split have gone on to win the series 30 of 49 times.
Atlanta’s odds of beating LA aren’t 61%. It does show that the Braves earned precisely what every road team wants: a split followed by two opportunities to finish the series at home.
The bullpen proved Atlanta could win without Chris Sale. Now Sale has to prove waiting for him was worth it.
Of course Sale wanted the ball...he's an effing DAWG! But sometimes, a manager has to protect the player from themselves.
Walt would have been second guessed from here to eternity if the Braves had lost yesterday but it worked out and I'm glad it did.
Now, it's a best of 3. We have home field advantage and we've got our #1 and #2 starting pitchers going in games 3 and 4.
Are we 61% favorites to win the NLDS? No, but our odds are a helluva lot better than they were after losing on Saturday! Go Braves!!
This is the opposite of the mistake that Bobby Cox made in the 2002 NLDS. That year, the Braves had an elite bullpen (a welcome change from the Nineties when the bullpen was the team’s Achilles Heel) and yet they were eliminated because Bobby started Glavine in Game One and then on short rest on Game Four. The latter was Bad Glavine and the Braves blew their chance to win the series. The correct deployment would have been Millwood in Games One and Five (he was the team’s best starter over the second half of the season) with Glavine, Maddux, and Moss (with a short hook) in the middle three.
So anyway, I approve of Walt’s reasoning. Don’t put a veteran starter on short rest. Make sure that your ace has maximal impact.