Sale On

 

Since joining the NL for the first time in 2024, Chris Sale has yet to finish a season with an ERA higher than 2.60. His Cy Young season in '24 had a 2.38 ERA. Through 11 2026 games, he has a 2.01 ERA. All of this on what the Red Sox assumed was borrowed time.

Not that it's been enjoyable as of late, but if you wanted to check how the returns for Sale are doing in Boston right now, well...Vaughn Grissom's not even in Boston. He's currently a utility guy in Anaheim. Meaning once again, the Red Sox traded a big piece for prospects that couldn't even stick around long enough to help them do anything. No wonder the fans want John Henry to sell. 

Though we all thought the Jack McDowell comparisons would do him in, Chris Sale has become one of the most reliable pitchers of the 'K-or-nothing' era of baseball. This year, Sale's on track to reach 2700 career strikeouts, and his career ERA still sits below 3. He's also on pace to crack 60 career WAR, and he recently notched his 150th career win. Obviously nobody can do what Nolan Ryan did and overthrow for 25 years anymore, but Sale has maintained so much success just by consistently whizzing past people. So far he has 80 Ks this year, and on a Braves team where the next-nearest strikeout artist is trying to stay healthy and the other two everyday guys are leverage/control guys who don't throw hard, it's positively refreshing. The 2025 Braves went in banking on the high-speed guy like Sale, and then Schwellenbach and Lopez got hurt, Sale missed a third of the season and it was up to Holmes and Elder to keep the lights on. Now that the approach has been altered and it's less geared around the overthrowing, Sale can just do what he does and there's plenty of fallbacks.

The failsafes are one of the reasons the Braves are still a league superpower. Last year they got cut with their pants down because they were unprepared for the majority of the pitching staff getting hurt. Now they have swing options. J.R. Ritchie gave it a go, and while it didn't work, he was able to swing out when Strider came back. Martin Perez went from an in-camp maybe to one of the most unexpected rotation weapons in Atlanta, with a 2.70 ERA and 40 Ks in 11 games, proving he truly is the Venezuelan counterpart to Charlie Morton. Mauricio Dubon was the replacement for Ha-Seong Kim at short, and Dubon's been so good even after Kim's return that the position continues to be his. The one thing they couldn't really predict was losing both Drake Baldwin and Sean Murphy, meaning Chadwick Tromp is now the starting catching option for the Braves, and Sandy Leon is closing in on him. If this wasn't a really good Braves team with so many other great starring performances, it'd be worrying. But Baldwin'll be back soon, and it's not breaking the team.

There's so much depth to this team, and so many successful seasons, that another star performance from Chris Sale just feels like the cherry on top. I hope they keep at it, as they really could chase the Dodgers for the league championship this year.

Coming Tomorrow- A guy who was traded for Tommy Edman, who's honestly doing a much better job than he would have, and is still looking to win the trade with his new, rebuilding team.