Why Robert Suarez’s return to the mound was so encouraging

The Braves added another walk-off win to their tally last night with a 3-2 victory over the Reds, and there were a slew of fun moments — but none more so than the return of Robert Suarez to major-league action.

The All-Star reliever hadn’t pitched in a major-league game since the middle of June, and had only pitched in one game, period, since then — a one-inning relief appearance for the Gwinnett Stripers last weekend. It wasn’t a clean outing on Wednesday night. In fact, Suarez actually gave up the go-ahead run after surrendering a triple to the first batter he faced. But he was able to limit the damage to just the one run, setting down the next three batters in order.

And most encouraging? Suarez was lighting up the radar gun at 99 MPH.

There’s obviously still some rust the veteran must overcome, and unfortunately, he doesn’t have much time to do so before the damage really starts to count. Walt Weiss said before the game that Suarez will make one more appearance on Saturday prior to the Wild Card Series, but from the eye test his first time out, the stuff is difficult to differentiate from what we saw earlier in the season. It looks like the Braves got back an incredible weapon at just the right time.

On the offensive side of things, Austin Riley and Matt Olson both hit solo shots, leading to a 2-2 game going into extras. Brent Suter was able to set down the Reds in order in the top half of the inning, continuing his stellar work since the Braves acquired him at the trade deadline, and then Mauricio Dubon finished the job with a high-bouncing chopper that never even passed the mound but was enough to bring in the speedy DaShawn Keirsey Jr.

But the most impressive thing about Wednesday night — shockingly — was Chris Sale putting the cherry on top of his incredible 2026 campaign. The 37-year-old was making his final start of the season — a tune-up before he takes the mound in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series. Expectations were that he would go through the motions for four or five innings to stay loose, but there’s no such thing as 90% when Chris Sale has the ball in his hand.

He wound up throwing 97 pitches, finishing 5.2 innings of one-run ball, and his last pitch was a strikeout, giving him a clean 200 punchouts on the campaign.

Sale’s final numbers for the season are simply absurd, finishing with a 2.16 ERA and leading the league in BB/9, HR/9, and K/BB ratio. He had 200 strikeouts compared to just 31 walks — nonsensical numbers for a third season in a row, all of which came after the rest of the league had deemed him finished due to a wide array of injuries. There was no better way for him to finish things off, but the real fun begins next week, when Sale takes the mound in a playoff game for the first time as a member of the Braves.

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(Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire)