LOS ANGELES — With ace Chris Sale on the mound, the reeling Atlanta Braves needed a win Tuesday at Dodger Stadium just about as badly as any team expected to contend can need a win in the first week of a 162-game season.
Not only had the Braves lost their first five games, but they had scored one run in their last three games and had not held a lead since midway through the season opener at San Diego. Their offense was the NL’s worst, their pitching staff was already springing leaks and their front office’s quiet offseason was looking worse by the day.
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So, yes, they really needed a win.
They didn’t get it.
Mookie Betts’ two-run homer off Sale in the sixth inning gave the unbeaten Los Angeles Dodgers their first lead and they wouldn’t relinquish it in a 3-1 win at Dodger Stadium, dropping the Braves to 0-6, their worst start since the 2016 team lost its first nine.
They are the only winless team in Major League Baseball, and the Braves are last in most offensive categories, including a .137 batting average and .458 OPS with nine runs in six games. They are easily the majors’ worst when hitting with runners on base at .076 (6-for-55), including an almost unfathomable 1-for-34 with runners in scoring position.
“I can’t explain it,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said of the woeful hitting. “I’m sure they’re pressing. That’s human nature, to press when everybody wants to be the guy. They’re not taking it (with them) on defense, that’s for sure. They’re playing the heck out of the defensive side of the ball.”
The season-opening skid is now two games longer than the worst by any Braves team to ever advance to the postseason. Atlanta, picked by many pundits as the team with the best chance to knock off the defending World Series champion Dodgers in the NL, finds itself alone in last place in the NL East, four games behind Philadelphia.
“It’s just been tough,” said Sale, the reigning Cy Young Award winner, who has been charged with three runs in five innings in each of his first two starts. “We really just haven’t played really well as a whole and just haven’t clicked. That’s obviously bad, but the good news is, you look around this room and you see who’s in here, you know there’s only a matter of time, right?
“And luckily, at this point in the season, we have time. We don’t want to lean on that too hard; you want to get it going eventually. But we have confidence in this clubhouse and who we have and what we can do.”
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Several current Braves were around when the 2021 team started 0-4 and went on to win the World Series. Some were on the 2022 team that was four games under .500 after 50, then reeled off a 14-game winning streak on the way to a 101-win season and the fifth of their six consecutive NL East titles.
That means Snitker and some players and coaches know how quickly things can change. But so far, the Braves have shown no sign of being a team about to surge.
When they took a 1-0 lead in the second inning, it was an unearned run after a Betts error at the back end of a potential inning-ending double play grounder by Bryan De La Cruz. The Braves went hitless in six at-bats with runners in scoring position.
On the board!#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/D0e2yGZgte
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) April 2, 2025
It was their first lead since Austin Riley’s fifth-inning homer put them ahead 4-3 on Opening Day, in a game they lost 7-4.
“It’s a hard start,” said Marcell Ozuna, who had one of the Braves’ three hits — a leadoff single in the second inning — and their only run Tuesday. “But I got the feeling that as soon as we get home, we’re gonna be fine, for sure.”
Before they face the Marlins (4-2) in Friday’s home opener, the Braves have one more chance to avoid a winless week out West. It’ll be a big ask: Bryce Elder is back from Triple A to start Wednesday’s finale in place of injured Reynaldo López, and will face two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell in front of another huge, rowdy crowd, where attendance topped 50,000 for each of the first two games in the series.
To add to their miserable week, an MRI on López’s balky shoulder was inconclusive, and the team announced Tuesday he will have arthroscopic surgery next week in Los Angeles. It’ll be an exploratory procedure by Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the surgeon who did Braves star Ronald Acuña Jr.’s knee surgery last May. The Braves won’t know the extent of López’s injury or the timetable for his return until after the surgery.
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The Braves put López on the injured list Monday with a preliminary diagnosis of shoulder inflammation, and the hope is that he will need just a clean-up-type procedure and could be back to pitch again later this season.
In the interim, the Braves will have to lean on the likes of Elder, AJ Smith-Shawver and Grant Holmes to handle starts at the back of the rotation, with Spencer Schwellenbach now effectively their No. 2 starter behind Sale. They could have 2023 MLB wins and strikeouts leader Spencer Strider back later this month after a year-long rehab from internal-brace elbow surgery.
With Sale on the mound Tuesday, the Braves liked their chances despite their dreadful offense to date. They knew a run or two might be enough if Sale was at the top of his game, and for a while he was, retiring 12 of 13 batters in a stretch through the fifth inning. Betts was the only Dodger to reach base in that span; he was hit by a pitch.
But Sale appeared to tire as the game progressed and didn’t touch 95 mph with any fastball to the three batters he faced in the sixth: Shohei Ohtani (leadoff single), Betts (homer on a hanging 1-1 slider over the middle) and Tommy Edman (single).
“He’s not one of the best pitchers in the league on accident,” Betts said. “Chris threw a really good game. Really just kind of one swing, and fortunately it was me, and it went over the fence. I was looking for something to hit. He throws a lot of strikes. I think he threw 70-something pitches, 80-something pitches, and only had 20-something balls (87 pitches/63 strikes). So you’ve got to go up there and be ready to swing.”
After Edman’s single, Pierce Johnson came in to replace Sale. Johnson got a strikeout before surrendering a single to Will Smith that scored Edman, who had stolen second and advanced to third on an errant throw by rookie catcher Drake Baldwin.
Sale was charged with four hits, three runs (all earned) and no walks, and had five strikeouts.
“Five innings, three runs, ain’t gonna get you too much a whole lot,” he said of his outing. “So, I would like to be able to do better than that.”
(Photo of Bryan De La Cruz: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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