Preview Braves vs. Angels: Braves want to even the series thanks to Chris Sale

Atlanta’s frustrating rollercoaster of a season continued Friday, as it lost a winnable game because its offense sputtered. The offense has been better of late than it was during the brutal stretch over the summer, but it still struggles to find consistency.

Luckily for Atlanta, they have baseball’s best pitcher on the mound to avoid a three-game losing streak. Chris Sale joined the Braves, possibly the league’s best offseason transfer, and has only posted a 2.12 FIP in 134.2 innings through mid-August. The Braves could really use another one of his phenomenal starts that have been expected from him this season to stop the Angels’ poor offense. His slow slider was the best breaking pitch in the league this season, according to Statcast. His fastball was pretty good, and his changeup was great to boot. He was everything the Braves hoped for when they made this transfer, and more.

The Angels will start with Griffin Canning, and this is probably one of the most one-sided pitching matchups all season. Canning has a really good changeup, but otherwise a pretty abysmal arsenal, and struggles to do much of anything productive outside of innings catching. He throws a 90+ mph four-seamer that’s very hittable, and is also a pretty bad slider and curveball. His strikeouts are well below his career baseline this season without much to show for it. He doesn’t have a particularly impressive ground ball rate, and he has a pretty average walk rate. Canning should be exactly the kind of starting pitcher the Braves offense wants to face to bounce back from a rough night.

This is simply a game the Braves have to win. The pitching competition is too favorable and the talent gap too great to do otherwise. Of course, this is baseball, so there is always significant variance, but by baseball standards, the Braves should be the clear favorites in this game.

Game info

Date/time of the game: Saturday, August 17, 9:38 p.m. ET

Location: Angel Stadium, Anaheim, California

TV: Bally Sports Southeast, MLB Network (out of market)

Streaming: MLB.tv

Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM