Chis Sale’s Injury Clouds the Braves’ Chances for a Rebound

Last Wednesday against the Mets, Chris Sale nearly went the distance for the first time in over six years. Now he’s been sidelined — an all-too-familiar occurrence in recent years — thanks to a freak injury, a fractured rib cage suffered while making an acrobatic defensive play. His loss interrupts a strong follow-up to his first Cy Young-winning season and a stretch in which the Braves have tried to dig themselves out of their early-season hole.

At Truist Park, Sale shut out the Mets on four hits through the first eight innings, needing just 102 pitches. With a 5-0 lead, manager Brian Snitker sent his ace back out for the ninth, giving him a shot at his first shutout since June 5, 2019, when he spun a three-hitter for the Red Sox against the Royals. Facing Juan Soto to lead off the inning, Sale ran the count full, then induced the slugger to hit a soft chopper to the right side of the infield. The 36-year-old lefty dove for the ball halfway between the mound and first base, landed on his left side while stopping it, and recovered to throw to first from his knees. It was an impressive play, if not an entirely necessary one given the score and the possibility that second baseman Ozzie Albies could have thrown out the none-too-fleet-footed Soto. “Do you think he wants this complete game?” marveled play-by-play broadcaster Brandon Gaudin.

With the adrenaline pumping, Sale didn’t show any sign of injury. He followed up his diving play by striking out Pete Alonso, blowing a 96-mph four-seamer by him for his sixth punchout of the night. He was one strike away from finishing when Brandon Nimmo blooped a single into left field on his 116th pitch of the night. Not wanting to push the matter any further — Sale hadn’t gone past 116 pitches since August 19, 2017, and no pitcher this season has gone past 117 — Snitker brought in closer Raisel Iglesias, who needed just two pitches to close out the game by retiring Luis Torrens on a grounder.

On Friday when Sale was doing his exercises as part of his between-starts routine, he “felt like something wasn’t right,” according to Snitker. X-rays revealed Sale had suffered what the Braves called a “fractured left rib cage,” suggesting the injury is more serious than a single cracked rib. Sale was placed on the 15-day injured list retroactive to Thursday, but he won’t be back that quickly.

“With bones like that, they’ve got to heal before you can start the process, but I have no idea how long it will be,” Snitker said.

The Braves will wait until Sale’s symptoms diminish before providing a timeline for his return. “It likely will be a significant period, given the nature of the injury, perhaps magnified by his age, his slender physique and the amount of torque that the 6-foot-6 sidearming lefty produces in his delivery,” wrote The Athletic’s David O’Brien. A long absence would require Sale to rebuild his pitch count, so it’s worth noting how much time passes before he resumes throwing.

The Baseball Prospectus Recovery Dashboard has only a couple of precedents that offer any guidance for a timeframe; most of the rib fractures suffered by pitchers over the past decade were stress fractures, such as the one that sidelined Sale for 99 days in 2022. Of the two that were not, the Dodgers’ Walker Buehler missed 33 days in 2018, interrupted by an ill-conceived one-inning start, after being hit by a line drive that caused a “microfracture” of a rib. The Cubs’ Keegan Thompson missed 41 days last year due to a rib fracture, the cause of which was never revealed publicly.

However long his absence is, Sale’s loss is a tough blow for the Braves, who struggled out of the gate while Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider recovered from surgeries, losing their first seven games and 13 of their first 18. They briefly clawed their way above .500 in mid-May, went into a funk that knocked them as far as 10 games below .500 (27-37 on June 8), but have since recovered by winning eight of 12. Even so, they’re currently 11 games behind the Phillies in the NL East race and seven games out of the third NL Wild Card spot, with four teams ahead of them. Their Playoff Odds are just 26.7%.

Last year marked not only Sale’s first Cy Young win — he’d finished second, third, fourth (twice), fifth (twice) and sixth in the voting previously — but also his first season avoiding the injured list since 2017. This injury probably closes the door on another award-winning season just when he had pitched his way back into consideration after being lit for a 6.17 ERA in 23 1/3 innings over his first five starts, never lasting longer than five innings. He’s posted a major league-best 1.23 ERA (with a 2.22 FIP) in 66 innings over his last 10 turns:

Sale didn’t allowed more than one run in any of his last six starts, and only twice allowed two or more runs in a game over that 10-start run. He’s been been so good that his overall stat line looks like an extension of last season:

Sale’s strikeout, walk, and homer rates aren’t quite as good as they were last year, and he’s allowed a higher barrel rate as well (7.6% vs. 5.6%), but even so, he’s third in the NL in ERA, FIP, strikeout rate, strikeout-walk differential, and strikeouts (114), while also ranking sixth in WAR (2.5). A peek under the hood shows that while his slider has remained devastating, his changeup hasn’t fooled hitters to the same degree. Where they batted .155 and slugged .191 with a 24.2% whiff rate in 114 plate appearances against the pitch last season, they’re hitting .444 and slugging .704 in 27 PA against it this year. In response, he’s basically abandoned the pitch, throwing just six changeups during that aforementioned six-start stretch, with his overall usage dropping from 14.2% to 5.9%. With a simplified mix, batters have been more successful against his four-seamer, improving from .a .248 AVG/.431 SLG last year to .331 AVG/.500 SLG this year.

Sale’s injury thins out a Braves rotation that has already lost Reynaldo López to arthroscopic shoulder surgery and AJ Smith-Shawver to Tommy John surgery. It’s possible López could return late in the season; he’s due for an evaluation in early July, 12 weeks after undergoing surgery, but there are no guarantees when it comes to smooth returns from shoulder surgery. Of the other Braves starters, Strider is trending in the right direction after a rocky return from UCL internal brace surgery; he’s posted a 3.89 ERA and 3.66 FIP through seven starts totaling 37 innings. Spencer Schwellenbach has been excellent, pitching to a 3.26 ERA and 3.33 FIP, and Grant Holmes has been a serviceable innings eater (3.75 ERA, 4.47 FIP), but both he and Bryce Elder (4.77 ERA, 4.61 FIP) have struggled to keep the ball in the park.

To replace Sale in the rotation, the Braves have already called up righty Didier Fuentes from Triple-A Gwinnett. He debuted against the Marlins on Friday night, three days past his 20th birthday, making him the youngest pitcher to start in the majors since Julio Urías did so at 19 years, 289 days in 2016. Fuentes allowed four runs in five innings while striking out three, taking the loss in a 6-2 defeat.

Listed at six feet and 170 pounds, Fuentes placed 11th on the Braves Top Prospects list in March as a 40+ FV prospect whose fastball sat around 93 mph, but he’s leveled up to the point that he cracked the Top 100 as a 50-FV prospect at the end of April, and he currently sits at no. 82 on The Board. His fastball averaged 95.7 mph at Gwinnett and 96.2 mph in his debut. Here’s his latest report, from Eric Longenhagen:

Fuentes is a loose, undersized righty who allowed just 80 baserunners and struck out 98 in 75 2/3 innings in 2024, mostly living off his ability to locate his fastball to the top of the zone. There were times last year when Fuentes was paving over A-ball lineups even though he was using his fastball at a 70-80% clip. On the season, he used it 70% of the time and still struck out 32% of opponents. For further context, the average big league fastball generated a 23% miss rate in 2024, while Fuentes’ was well above 30%. Fuentes was originally written up on this cycle’s Braves list as a 40+ FV prospect with a traits-heavy fastball who could break out if improvements to his conditioning facilitated a boost in arm strength. Well, that has happened. To start 2025, Fuentes carved in three High-A starts and was given a quick hook up to Double-A. His fastball was routinely 94-96 and touched 97-98 several times in his first Double-A start, while last year he averaged 93 mph. He explodes way down the mound and generates nearly seven feet of extension, even though the 19-year-old righty is only listed at six feet tall. His drive off the rubber is so explosive that umpires have had to stop the game to talk to him about how far off of it he comes off before release.

Fuentes is still a two-pitch guy and his slider isn’t consistently good yet, but his fastball is going to carry him to a meaningful big league role as a starter, much like Bryan Woo, Bryce Miller or Joe Ryan at the start of their big league tenures… He’s a potential mid-rotation weapon.

Both of our pitch-modeling systems went gaga over Fuentes’ debut, with PitchingBot scoring his fastball a 65 on the 20–80 scale and Stuff+ grading it at 117 on a scale where 100 is average.

I’ve omitted Fuentes’ splitter, of which he threw just one, but included his two breaking balls, each of which he threw about 20% of the time against the Marlins. The models both liked Fuentes’ curve nearly as much as the heater, offered mixed (but decent) reviews of the slider, and scored the command and overall mix quite well. If he can maintain grades in that vicinity, the Braves might just have an upgrade who could supplant a back-end starter once Sale returns… but oh boy, that’s getting way ahead of the matter, both in terms of injuries and the potential growing pains of 20-year-old pitchers. Maybe Fuentes’ arrival proves to be a silver lining for the Braves. Right now, though, it’s tough to see Sale’s injury as anything but another dark cloud over their season.

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