Chris Sale averaged 97.2 mph on his four-seam fastball in Game 3 of the National League Division Series on Tuesday. His season average was 96.1. On the night his team needed him most, in his third appearance in eight days, he threw harder than he had at any point in 2026.
He still lost 3-1, because two pitches in the fourth inning went over the fence.
Sale finished with five innings, seven hits, three runs, seven strikeouts, two home runs and 95 pitches. Enrique Hernandez hit a two-run homer on a changeup. Freddie Freeman followed with a solo shot. Everything else Sale threw was close to untouchable.
The first two innings were the best he has looked
Sale struck out six through two innings. Only Mike Hampton, in Game 2 of the 2003 NLDS, had done that for Atlanta in a postseason game. He generated eight whiffs over those first two innings and then only two over the final three, which is what a 62-pitch, three-inning workload does to a pitcher who has thrown in three games in eight days.
He threw 95 pitches in Wild Card Game 1 and 21 pitches in Wild Card Game 3 before this. Asking him for a fourth gear in October after that is asking a lot, and he found it anyway for two innings.
Sale’s own read was blunt. “One bad inning kind of ruined the whole game,” he said.
Dave Roberts basically admitted Sale beat his lineup
The Dodgers manager was not pretending Los Angeles solved him. “Any time you can get Chris Sale out of a game after five innings you’re doing something,” Roberts said after the win.
That is a compliment dressed as a scouting note. The Dodgers did not hit Sale. They hit two mistakes and then let Yoshinobu Yamamoto do the rest. Yamamoto went seven innings with 10 strikeouts and one run on 98 pitches.
One catch kept the game scoreless longer than it should have been
In the third, with nothing on the board, Mauricio Dubon leapt at the left-field wall to take an extra-base hit away from Freeman on a ball hit 101.3 mph. Dubon said he was “just trying to help Chris Sale out a little bit.” Sale called it an “amazing catch.”
That is the game in miniature. Atlanta’s defense and pitching held up. Atlanta’s hitters went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position.
What happens to Sale now
His next possible start is the National League Championship Series, and Atlanta has to win Games 4 and 5 for that to exist. Tyler Mahle gets Game 4 at Truist Park, carrying a 1.99 ERA over nine starts since the Braves traded for him on August 2.
Sale shut out the Dodgers on August 27 with 11 strikeouts over five hits. He has beaten this lineup. He outpitched most versions of himself on Tuesday.
The verdict on Atlanta’s season is not going to be written about its rotation. Ronald Acuna Jr. is 3-for-21 in this postseason. Matt Olson is 4-for-23 with nine strikeouts. Drake Baldwin is 3-for-23. Sale could throw 99 in Game 5 and it would not fix that.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.