Chris Sale starts at Philadelphia on Friday at 6:40 ET against Cristopher Sánchez. Atlanta has started him 24 times this season and gone 14-10 in those games. That number hides almost everything.
Score two runs or fewer for him and Atlanta is 2-9. Score three or more and it is 12-1.
Run support is just the runs a club scores in a pitcher’s start, so this is Atlanta’s record split on its own offense rather than on anything Sale did. Eleven of his starts fall on the low side and thirteen on the high side, which is close to a coin flip on which version of the offense turns up.
The cliff sits between two and three
Atlanta is 10-0 when it scores five or more for Sale and 0-3 when it scores exactly two. Source: MLB Stats API, pulled September 3, 2026.
The middle of that chart is thin and the ends are not
Three runs and four runs are one start and two starts. Nothing can be concluded from either, and the chart plots them anyway because hiding them would make the pattern look cleaner than the evidence does.
The ends carry the weight. Nine starts at one run or fewer, in which Atlanta went 2-6. Ten starts at five or more, in which it went 10-0.
What we published two weeks ago, and where it stands
On August 21 this site published the split as 1-9. It is now 2-9. Sale started on August 27, Atlanta scored one run, and Atlanta won anyway.
That is the whole correction and it moves nothing about the shape. The number that was never published is the other half, and it is the more useful one. A club that goes 12-1 behind a starter given three runs is not being let down by that starter.
What would have to be true on Friday
Philadelphia starts Cristopher Sánchez. If Atlanta scores three, the season says it wins. If it scores two, the season says it does not, and the season has said that eleven times.
Nothing here predicts Friday. Twenty four starts is a season, not a law, and a club that scores twice for a pitcher eleven times has told you more about the offense than about the pitcher.
I’m a fan of these teams, not a neutral observer.
Sources: MLB Stats API, games final through September 3, 2026. Figures from pipeline/mlb_run_support.py.