When Chris Sale surrendered a three run double to Bryan De La Cruz after a previous pitch in the inning seemed it would have retired the side. Despite clearly not having his best start, Sale buckled down and battled through seven against the Marlins on the same day that the Atlanta Braves had announced that their Opening Day starter, Spencer Strider, would be shut down for the season. “If I’m going to pitch like horse[expletive],” Sale colorfully said in the post game press conference, “at least I can save the bullpen a little bit.”
Chris Sale is of a different ilk. Coming up toward the end of the previous generation, Sale sat under the learning tree of Mark Buerhle and Jake Peavy. There’s an expectation set from that previous generation of pitchers that Sale exemplified. From 2010 to 2018, Sale averaged over 200 innings with 240 strikeouts per season even though he started primarily as a reliever with the White Sox. Despite playing for bad baseball teams, Sale had the expectation of a winner, bulldogging his way through starts. Take this grand slam from Mike Trout as a primary example. It’s the eighth inning, Chris Sale is at 114 pitches. It’s a 3-2 count, 5-1 White Sox lead over the Angels. The issue here is that the bases are loaded, Sale is laboring having recorded zero outs in the frame, and he’s pitching against the best player in the game at the time as this would be the season that the Los Angeles centerfielder wins his first of three MVP awards. Sale still makes his pitch: an 86-mph slider down and away, getting Mike Trout to swing at ball four. The problem? He’s Mike Trout, and he tied the game with a missile pulled to left-center. It’s a season where the White Sox finished sixteen games under .500, and Robin Ventura’s bullpen was the third-worst in baseball. Situationally, Sale had no reason to be in the game, yet the Sox had nobody to turn to, even with a four-run lead in the eighth.
The thing that video doesn’t show is the aftermath of the moment: a heated Chris Sale slamming a bat into the dugout wall in frustration. He’d finish the 2014 season third in American League Cy Young polling, his second of six consecutive top five finishes. It was a season where Sale posted a 2.17 ERA, 208 strikeouts, and a league-leading 173 ERA+ in a remarkable campaign for an unremarkable ballclub. The story of the courtship between Sale and the Sox never quite changed: Sale posted an ERA of exactly 3, struck out 1,244 hitters over 1110 frames, and finished 24 wins over .500 for a ballclub that never made the postseason with him on their staff. As Sale posted excellent numbers, Sale also burst out. In his final season, for example, Sale cussed out the President of Baseball Operations in Spring Training and was sent home during the summer for cutting up the teams jerseys before the game.
For Sale, the off-the-field issues are more-complex because they’ve never exactly been about Chris Sale. The bat-to-dugout hit was the competitive will-to-win, sure, but the other two are harder to explain than that. Kenny Williams, then-President for the White Sox organization, saw the business end of Chris Sale’s conniption fit at the behest of veteran first baseman Adam LaRoche, who forfeited his $13M salary when Williams banned his son Drake from the Spring Training clubhouse. This hadn’t been an issue in prior seasons and Drake had never had an issue with any of the players, yet was labeled a ‘distraction.’ Sale, a locker room leader, essentially served as a spokesperson for the players unhappy with the rule. Furthermore, the objectively unprofessional ‘Florida Man’ performance of the jersey cutting from the Lakeland, FL native wasn’t necessarily out of left field. Institutionally, the starting pitcher historically selected the uniform the players wore that day among approved options. The White Sox were starting to do away with the tradition in spite of player feedback in favor of the tradition, and Sale, who was on his way out, had decided to do something about it. Unprofessional as it may be, many teammates spoke in favor of Sale’s actions, leading many to believe there’s more to the story than the general public knows about.
As Sale’s time in the Windy City ended, a trade to Boston provided a change of scenery to a city and organization that thrived on Sale being himself. With that, Sale became an even better pitcher in 2017 and 2018. In 2017, his 2.45 FIP led the league, suggesting the Boston defense let him down. Yet, with 215 innings and a 2.90 ERA, Sale was still significantly better than most pitchers. Despite injuries limiting him to only 158 innings in 2018, Sale continued his streak of 200 punchouts and top five Cy Young finishes. His 1.98 FIP once again suggested unluckiness, but his 2.11 ERA was stellar heading into the postseason. With the Red Sox not expected to be a big favorite to win it all because of an unreliable relief corps, Sale had his finest moment of his Major League career as he struck out one of the finest players of the generation to clinch the World Series in front of a Chavez Ravine crowd that found themselves in a moment as devastating as Sale’s slider.
Fast forward five years: Chris Sale is set to enter the final season of a five-year/$145M extension he inked following the 2018 World Series. He’s contemplating retirement, finding out that he’s been traded to the Atlanta Braves for Vaughn Grissom. The Red Sox are paying the Braves $17M to take the one-time most reliable ace in baseball off their hands. From 2019 to 2023, Chris Sale accrued just 4.7 WAR, which would have been his second-lowest in a single season from 2012 to 2018. Over the course of five seasons he had pitched fewer than 300 innings to a mediocre 4.16 ERA. Once MLBs fiercest competitor, Sale’s body hadn’t even let him compete in a decent amount of time. A nagging elbow injury cost him the better part of three years, yet it’s a rib injury from working out and a wrist injury in a bike accident that cost him the 2022 season with just 5 innings of work.
There was enough to like about Sale’s repertoire to add him as a cheap third starter for the club behind Strider and Max Fried due to Sale’s 2023 peripherals. Sale had a chase rate in the 92nd percentile proving that his put away stuff was still among the best in the league despite essentially years away from the game, yet his groundball percentages and barrel percentages were career lows. This doesn’t necessarily suggest that the results were on Sale declining as much as Sale needing to re-adjust to new competition after a long time on the shelf. Some small coaching tweaks and adjustments and perhaps Sale finds himself missing the barrels, leading to weak contact to coincide with the strikeout stuff. At that point, the entirety of the risk would be in making sure that Sale can maintain his health.
As the Braves starting staff found itself plagued with injuries, Chris Sale remarkably remained healthy in 2024….and dominant.
10 days after the man who had beaten him for the Cy Young in 2018, Blake Snell, no-hit the Reds, he had a no-hitter against the Braves through seven. The previous night the Braves had blown a crucial six-run lead in the eighth inning against Colorado in a must win game down the stretch. Sale, without his best stuff, dealt with his centerfielder overrunning a pop fly to leadoff the game, allowing a runner in scoring position thanks to an error. In a situation where most pitchers would be okay with surrendering the early run, Sale refused, striking out the next two despite struggling because he had to pitch for the strikeout. A groundball ended the threat. Sale finished his night with 12 strikeouts, no runs, and seven innings of work in a game the Braves won 1-0 in the tenth. It’s indicative of the normalcy that Sale provided in a year where everything for Atlanta went south. In a year where the Braves were 22-7 in games started by Chris Sale, the team went 67-66 in games Sale didn’t appear in. The seven losses on the ledger include a 1-0 loss in Chicago to arguably the worst pitching staff the game of baseball has ever seen, as well as four other games where Sale surrendered two or fewer earned runs. Outside of two starts, Sale gave his team a chance to win every night, even when his team was making it hard for him to do so.
The Braves defense is said to have cost Sale eight runs on his ERA this season. For example, this RBI double (link here) from Keibert Ruiz. The hit came with two outs, yet it’s a lazy flyball that even the Nats catcher himself assumed off the bat would be caught. As Jorge Soler nonchalantly jogged over, the ball fell in on the fair side of the chalk and bounced into the stands. These types of miscues were rampant for the Atlanta outfield this season as Soler, Ramon Laureano, Eddie Rosario, and Adam Duvall all struggled defensively with Marcell Ozuna taking up every at bat as the designated hitter. Even more impressively, there is no Chris Sale outburst during the season. Every postgame presser, even in games where the defense cost Sale, Sale regularly told the media he should have made a better pitch. At 35, Sale’s been around the block in a way he hadn’t been at 25. He’s more mature, he’s wiser. Because of this, instances of previous hot-headedness were few and far between, and he’s a focused leader of his pack.
Even with that defense, Sale’s results were immaculate. Sale paced in the senior circuit in strikeouts (225), ERA (2.38), wins (18), FIP (2.09), ERA+ (174), and K-per-nine (11.4). While maintaining his strikeout pace Sale saw an eight percent increase in groundball percentage and three percent increase in line drive percentages, dropping his flyball percentages. This allowed his homerun rate to drop by a full percentage point while also being half of his career homerun rate. While mixing in his changeup and sinker slightly more, the bigger arsenal change was his slider. Sale’s always had a plus slider, however, it’s primarily been a put away pitch. His fastball averaged out at 94 mph, down from 96 mph when he was younger. While it still plays, it’s not nearly as dominant a pitch as it used to be. Thus, Sale made his best pitch, the slider, his primary pitch in 2024 and used his fastball as his secondary, speeding up bats rather than slowing them down later in the count. His +24 run value on the slider was statistically the second most-dominant pitch in baseball, behind only Guardians’ Cade Smith’s fastball.
Furthermore, becoming only the fourth National League pitcher to secure an NL Triple Crown this century (2002 Randy Johnson, 2007 Jake Peavy, 2014 Clayton Kershaw) more than solidified Sale’s Cy Young achievement. But, it also places Sale back into the mix for best of his generation. As Sale continues to pitch, he seems destined to become only the 21st pitcher to record at least 3,000 strikeouts (there are currently 19 members of the club, however, Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw is currently at 2968 and is eyeing early next season to become the 20th). His 3.04 career ERA is a better mark than a majority of Hall of Fame starters, he sits top 50 all-time in Ks, and has surpassed the WAR threshold of a borderline Hall of Fame pitcher.
As Chris Sale’s 2024 season came to a close, back spasms cost him the last couple weeks of the season, ultimately capping his year well before the Braves clinched. As the bulldog spirit remains, the bulldog ability has diminished. The mindset is always the last thing to go, and objectively, Sale’s body isn’t what it used to be. It’s a year where he once-again became the best in the game in a time the Braves needed it. It’s a year where when teammate Reynaldo Lopez was set to start days before the All-Star Game, Sale campaigned to start so that Lopez could play in his first All-Star Game. But it’s also a year where Sale watched from the dugout when he was supposed to start on the final day of the season and subsequently in the postseason. A complicated year for Chris Sale, yet, it’s the story of his career: a fiery teammate carries his team until his body cannot carry them further through an innate desire to win at all costs. For Atlanta, the 35-year-old has proven that not only can he still pitch, but he can still pitch at a Hall of Fame level. For the Truist faithful, Sale’s heart has proven present, even if presented differently, as both a player and a teammate in a way that’s made a third fanbase fall in love with him. For Sale as he embarks on the later chapter of his career and his workload winds down, he finally accomplished the personal accolade that had eluded him while bulldozing the competition in Chicago and clinching the World Series in Boston: the Cy Young Award, signifying that he is the best pitcher in baseball.
Follow me on Twitter: @TheJameus.
Follow me on BlueSky here.
