Chris Sale couldn’t pitch in the Atlanta Braves’ final regular-season game, but he still led the National League this summer.
The Braves ace won the pitching Triple Crown, officially leading the National League in wins, ERA and strikeouts. Sale will finish the season with 18 wins, 225 strikeouts and a 2.38 ERA.
That makes this just the second time in the last century that pitchers have won the Triple Crown in both leagues in the same season. Detroit Tigers pitcher Tarik Skubal clinched the American League Triple Crown on Sunday. The last time this happened was in 2011, when Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander each took home the award. Before that, the last time there were two Triple Crown winners was in 1924.
His wins should also secure Cy Young voting this year, as no pitcher has failed to win the Cy Young Award after winning the Triple Crown.
Sale was scheduled to pitch in the second game of a rescheduled doubleheader against the New York Mets on Monday afternoon, but was ruled out at the last second due to back spasms, which reportedly first affected him on Sunday. the night. The Braves fell to the Mets late in the first game of that series, clinching a playoff spot for the Mets. The Braves have to win the second game to make the postseason.
While Sale and Skubal’s players profile quite similarly as original lefties who have enough speed to overpower hitters, they took very different paths to the Triple Crown.
Chris Sale had a career year at age 35
Sale was not a turnaround product for the Braves, but you would have been hard-pressed to find an objective observer who didn’t think he was past his prime.
The 35-year-old was one of baseball’s best pitchers from 2012 to 2018, a period that culminated in a World Series title with the Boston Red Sox. The cracks began to show in 2019, when Sale posted a career-worst 4.40 ERA and missed the final month and a half of the season due to elbow inflammation.
Tommy John surgery followed in 2020. Sale returned in 2021 and made just nine starts. He then made just two starts in a 2022 season that can only be described as “cursed.” Sale missed time due to a broken rib in the preseason, then a broken finger and then a broken wrist. The latter occurred in a bicycle accident.
The 2023 season was comparatively better for Sale, posting a 4.30 ERA in 20 starts, but it didn’t change the perception that his best days were behind him. Still, the Braves opted to buy cheap by sending Vaughn Grissom, a young but lightweight middle infielder, to Boston in exchange for Sale, plus $17 million in cash to cover his remaining salary.
And now, this.
What changed for the sale? In addition to a 1 mph increase across his entire arsenal, Sale threw his slider a career-high 40.3% of the time, according to Baseball Savant, at the expense of his four-seam fastball. Hitters had a harder time dealing with it, with declines across the board in their significant batted ball metrics.
But above all, Sale stayed healthy, something that seemed unlikely considering his age and the fact that he had some of the most violent mechanics in baseball. The result will be the first Cy Young Award of his career, something that eluded him during his dominant days in the American League.