He may not have been at his best, but Chris Sale still handled his business for the Braves

The flecks of gray in his beard aside, not much has changed with Chris Sale since he was pitching for the Red Sox.

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He’s still skinny as a scarecrow, loves having Sandy León as his personal catcher again, and competes on the mound like it’s his first season in the major leagues, not his 16th.

With Sale pitching five solid innings without his best command, the Braves slammed the reeling Sox, 10-2, in a Fenway Park matinee Thursday.

“Didn’t look like Chris had his best slider today, but he’s still as good as anybody without his best stuff,” Braves manager Walt Weiss.

The Red Sox didn’t believe that when they traded Sale and $17 million to the Braves before the 2024 season for infielder Vaughn Grissom. Sale was 17-18 with a 4.16 ERA from 2019-23 and had missed 56 starts due to injuries.

His best stuff was fleeting during that period. At the time of the trade, it looked like the Sox were moving on from an investment that had turned sour and saved some money in the process.

Sale is 33-11 with a 2.38 ERA over 61 games since. The lefthander won the National League Cy Young Award in 2024 and is looking like a contender again this season at 8-3 with a 2.01 ERA through 11 starts.

It’s a bad look for the Sox and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow. But in Breslow’s defense — words you haven’t often read in this space — Sale appeared to be on the downslope of his career at the time of the trade.

That he has proven otherwise looks like the finishing kick that should put him in the Hall of Fame.

For now, the goal is to return to the postseason and chase another championship. After losing 86 games last season, the Braves are 38-19 and have the best record in the NL. They had 11 hits Thursday, six for extra bases.

But it was a struggle for five innings.

Sale left two runners stranded in the first inning by striking out Andruw Monasterio, a backup infielder who was hitting fifth as the designated hitter.

The Sox left two more runners on in the second when Sale struck out Jarren Duran with a slider. With a runner on third and one out in the third inning, Sale hit Willson Contreras with a fastball — surely it just slipped — then struck out Monasterio again before getting Nick Sogard to ground out.

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Sale allowed two runs in the fourth but retired four of the last five batters he faced, all by strikeout. His teammates rewarded him by scoring six runs in the top of the sixth inning.

“I felt like I did just enough to kind of keep us in the game,” Sale said. “I told Sandy my slider was really kind of going the other way today. Fastball command was kind of all over the place. He really got me through that game.”

It also helped Sale that he was pitching at Fenway, a ballpark he loves, for the second time since the trade.

“Obviously, going to be a great atmosphere here,” he said. “I was able to kind of hone it in a little bit.”

But that was the extent of his emotions. He still had friends with the Red Sox, especially members of the medical staff he spent so much time with. But once he takes the mound, it’s all business.

“Any time you go back to a place where you used to play is going to be a little bit different. But you got to push that stuff to the side,” Sale said. “I’ve got a job to do, no matter if I’m here in Atlanta, or wherever it is. That’s to give my team a chance to win.”

In the end, the Red Sox did Sale a favor by sending him to Atlanta. And he didn’t really leave Boston, either.

Sale kept his home in Massachusetts. His family spent last November there, visiting Salem and seeing some sights on the Freedom Trail. They made friends in the neighborhood when he pitched for the Sox.

“Literally every day we had an itinerary of things we wanted to do,” he said. “Go to farms where we’d get some food, playgrounds, stuff like that. We love it here.”

They’ll be back again after this season. Sale hopes it will be after pitching in the World Series.

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