'This is mine': Sale tops 100 mph, goes distance

ATLANTA -- Chris Sale finished Thursday's eighth inning with 97 pitches, then walked the length of his dugout, found Braves manager Walt Weiss and left no doubt. "This is mine," Sale told him. Twelve pitches later, Sale finished what he started, preserving Atlanta's 1-0 lead to clinch a sweep of the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers and prove again that, at 37, he's still as good as ever. Sale threw his two fastest pitches since 2018, both to Shohei Ohtani, and twirled his first complete game since 2019. His ERA -- two years after earning his first Cy Young Award -- is 2.06, trailing only Jacob Misiorowski for the major league lead. Sale has now gone 21 consecutive starts without giving up more than three runs, the longest active streak in the sport. "You can make an argument that, as great a career as he's having, he's as good now as he's ever been," Weiss said. "It's mind-boggling." The last time Sale reached triple digits with his fastball was July 6, 2018, when he was a 29-year-old on a World Series-bound Boston Red Sox team and had yet to undergo Tommy John surgery. He did it again in the top of the third Thursday, throwing a 100.1 mph fastball that Ohtani fouled off. Two innings later, Sale threw a 99.6 mph fastball well above the strike zone -- his second-fastest pitch since that 2018 season -- and Ohtani swung through it for a strikeout. "Call it what it is -- that guy, he's doing things no one's ever seen," Sale said of Ohtani. "Tit for tat, he's probably the best I've ever seen. When you're facing the best, you got to bring your best. Tonight it worked out." Sale scattered five hits, walked none and collected 11 strikeouts. Only one Dodger was in scoring position. At 37 years, 150 days old, Sale became the oldest pitcher with a 10-strikeout, no-walk shutout since Randy Johnson threw a perfect game against the Braves in 2004, and the oldest pitcher to shut out the Dodgers since Rick Reuschel on July 3, 1987. It marked Sale's 28th game with 10 strikeouts and zero runs allowed, tied with Max Scherzer for fifth most since the mound was moved to its current distance in 1893, according to ESPN Research. The only ones with more are Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan. "Sucks being on this side," said Mookie Betts, Sale's former Red Sox teammate. "I've been on the other side seeing it, so I know it's pretty cool from their perspective. But from us, sometimes there's really nothing you can do. He was feeling good, throwing strikes as he always does." Sale also took the mound with a heavy heart. Prior to his start, he learned that a woman named Ashley Foss, a close family friend, died of cancer at 42 years old. Foss' brother and father have handled Sale's finances through his agency for decades. The two became close over the years. "It felt weird out there," Sale said. "It felt like I had a little something else helping me tonight. There's no question that was her out there." With the win, the Braves improved to 79-55, just one game behind the Dodgers for the No. 2 seed in the National League and, thus, a first-round bye. Their only run came on the first pitch thrown by Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a splitter out over the plate that young catcher Drake Baldwin sent 402 feet to right field for a solo homer. Sale took it from there, going the distance on a night when the Braves were significantly shorthanded in their bullpen. "He was on a mission," Weiss said. "You could see it. He was attacking from the first pitch. Not that he ever doesn't do that, but you could see. He had a different look in his eye. The look in his eye is always pretty good, but it was even a little bit different tonight."