Sunday's matchup against the Rockies looked pretty straightforward for the Atlanta Braves. They were sending Chris Sale, one of the best pitchers in baseball right now, to the hill against one of the worst offenses you are likely to ever see. Atlanta has already secured the series win, but sweeping Colorado would feel awfully nice. However, the Braves decided to switch things up unexpectedly on Saturday.
With a tough series against the Mets coming up, the Braves opted to move Sale from Sunday's start against the Rockies and instead will run him out there against New York this coming week at some point. For Braves fans, this may be unfortunately familiar to last year, but no one should be panicking yet.
The Braves will push Sale back to start one of the games against the Mets. Grant Holmes will start tomorrow. The Braves aren't committing to Sale starting Tuesday. But it doesn't sound like this is like the end of last year, where they were hiding Sale's injury.
— Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) June 14, 2025
Chris Sale just had his start pushed back by the Braves, but the reasoning doesn't seem injury related
Whenever Braves fans hear about a Sale start being pushed back, there is going to be flashbacks to the end of last season when Atlanta was trying not to show that Sale's back was bothering him. The secret got out in the playoffs when Sale was unavailable in that first round and the damage was done. The revelation that Sale would have been available in the NLDS did little to make fans feel much better.
However, a closer look (at least for now) does seem to show a different situation. Colorado is not a good baseball team and while Grant Holmes has pitched pretty well for the Braves, he is clearly the lesser of the two pitchers right now. Starting the right-handed Holmes on Sunday allows the lefty Sale to go against the better Mets team and one that has a lineup full of tough left-handed hitters.
Now, the calculus changes a lot if Sale's start gets moved again or we find out that something is bothering him. Right now, this rotation shuffle seems like savvy maneuvering with a very important series against a division rival coming up. If Sale doesn't throw against the Mets this week, we could have a major problem on our hands.