Chris Sale just wanted to be healthy. Once he pulled that off, the sky ended up being the limit.
Heading into 2024, Chris Sale just wanted to be healthy enough to do his job for the Atlanta Braves. As it turned out, he was able to not only accomplish that goal but he flew past the finish line as well and ended up having one of the best seasons of his career — one that revitalized the discussion surrounding his chances of making the Hall of Fame. While it may not have been as satisfying as a World Series-winning season surely must have been, this was still a season that Chris Sale could be extremely proud of.
How Acquired?
The Braves picked up Chris Sale in a trade with the Boston Red Sox. Boston got Vaughn Grissom in exchange and at the moment, it seemed like a balanced deal. The Braves had nowhere to put Vaughn Grissom in order to give him consistent playing time and they decided to take a chance on getting whatever they could out of the aging hurler. Meanwhile, the Red Sox wanted a promising prospect and were happy to put him at second base.
While the Red Sox paid the Braves $17 million in order to take Sale, the Braves decided that they wanted to pay Sale as well — Atlanta pulled the now-familiar move under Alex Anthopoulos of handing a contract extension to a player they immediately traded for. Sale signed a two-year, $38 million contract extension with a club option worth $18 million for the 2026 season.
What were the expectations?
Heading into 2024, it was understandable to assume that Chris Sale’s best days were long behind him. Sale missed the entire 2020 season due to recovery from Tommy John surgery and continued to make frequent visits to the IL in the years after that surgery. However, Sale had shown a glimmer of hope that the vintage version of himself that had dominated on the South Side of Chicago and in Boston with the way that he finished his 2023 season. Combine that with the fact that he’d be having a normal offseason heading into 2024, there was hope that Sale could at least serve as a productive and reliable member of Atlanta’s rotation heading into his first season with the Braves.
2024 Results
I mean, he won his first career Cy Young Award, he won Comeback Player of the Year, he won a Gold Glove, he made it back to the All-Star Game for the first time since 2018, he made the All-MLB First Team and he finished the season by winning the NL’s pitching Triple Crown — I’d say that qualifies as a decent 2024, right?
While this wasn’t a career year for Sale (which says a lot about the body of work that he’s built over the course of his career), it was his best season since his prime years with the Red Sox back in 2017 an 2018. It all started rather unassumingly, as Sale’s first four starts of the season saw him reach the sixth inning in each of his first two starts before going seven in the latter two starts. He gave up at least two runs in each of those four starts, including five runs against the Marlins on April 13 and three against the Rangers on April 19.
From that point forward, Sale entered into one of his most dominant portions of the season. Over a six start span over the course of a month, Sale threw 39 innings and only gave up three runs during that time while striking out 51 batters and only walking three. His “worst” outing during that run was on May 1 in Seattle where he only went five innings but still only gave up one run and struck out nine in the process. Suddenly it seemed like the Braves were fortunate enough to have acquired the vintage version of Chris Sale.
This stretch came to an inexplicable and inauspicious close when Sale got bombed on June 1 by the Oakland A’s for eight runs over four innings — at home, no less. However, Sale immediately bounced back and he never gave up more than two earned runs in any start he made from that point forward in 2024 — and that covers 18 starts, mind you!
During that 18-game stretch of excellence from early-June until the end of the season Atlanta went 14-4 as a team and they ended up needing every last one of those wins. Even in those four losses, three of them clearly weren’t due to Sale faltering on the mound — those four losses were 2-1 to the Nationals, 1-0 to the White Sox (lol), 3-2 to the Mets and 8-5 to the Brewers. Even in that rough start against the Brewers where he gave up three runs total and only made it into the fifth inning, he managed to strike out 10 batters and that was the start of a three-start run where he struck out 10 batters or more. It was that type of year for Chris Sale.
What went right?
Above all else, he stayed healthy. Chris Sale pitched 177.2 innings in 2024, which was the most he’d thrown in a single season since 2017 which is when he threw 214.1. His 29 starts were also the most he’d made in a single season since 2017. Instead of having to focus on recovering or bouncing-back from any type of injury, Sale could just focus on giving it everything he had in each start and the results bore that out. Sale finished the season with a 2.38 ERA, a 57 ERA-, a 2.09 FIP and a 53 FIP- — all of those numbers being the lowest since his dominant 2018 season. His strikeout percentage of 32.1 percent was the highest it was since 2019. His 26.5 percent strikeout-to-walk rate was the highest it’s been since 2019 as well.
Plain and simple, we got to see what a fully-healthy Chris Sale could do for the first time since 2019 and even at age-35, Sale proved that he had plenty left in the tank. His stuff was just completely nasty, too — opposing hitters only mustered up a .159 batting average against his changeup and a .171 BA against his slider. The xBA was also crazy as well — the xBA against his slider was only .175 (and he threw 1,135 of them in 2024!) and the xBA against his changeup was .209.
He picked up a Whiff percentage of 42.7 on his slider for the season. That was about as high as it was in 2018 when he threw 872 sliders and picked up a whiff percentage of 44.4 percent and in 2017 when he threw 1,127 sliders and racked up a whiff percentage of 39.9 percent. You could really argue that his slider was about as good as it’s ever been — which is saying a lot when you take Sale’s entire career into consideration.
What went wrong?
In a cruel twist of fate, the one time that Chris Sale had to deal with injury issues was when the Braves needed him the most in 2024. During his September 19 start against the Reds, Sale made it through five innings while striking out six and giving up two runs but it was clear that he didn’t have his best stuff on the day. As it turned out, he was suffering from back spasms that were bad enough to where it clearly affected him during that start in Cincinnati and it ended up causing him to be a late scratch for the final game of the season in a must-win game against the Mets. There was a slight chance that he could’ve been ready for the Postseason at some pint but the Braves went 0-2-and-BBQ in the Wild Card Series and that was that. It was a real bummer of an ending to what had been a storybook bounce-back season for Sale.
Also, while that start against Oakland at home doesn’t look as bad in hindsight since the A’s finished with a middle-of-the-road offense (according to wRC+), that was still an inexplicable outlier. This ended up being the first of three starts where he gave up nine hits but it was easily the worst of the trio. This was the only instance where he gave up two homers in one game, it was the most runs he gave up in a start all season (8) and it was the fewest strikeouts he racked up in any game (4, which he also picked up on July 14 against the Padres and August 23 against the Nationals). Sometimes you just have a bad day!
2025 Outlook
This’ll certainly be a tough act for Chris Sale to follow — and in his age-36 season, no less. With that being said, Sale should have plenty of motivation to keep up his performance heading into 2025. From a purely professional standpoint, Sale will be pitching in order to make sure that the Braves have a reason to exercise their club option so that he can lock himself into $18 million for 2026. From a competitive standpoint, it’s hard to imagine that a guy like Sale would be satisfied with how the 2024 season ended for him. While I’m not saying to expect another 6 fWAR season or anything like that, if he can continue to stay healthy then it would be very tough to doubt Chris Sale continuing to pitch at a high level as long as he continues to wear an Atlanta Braves uniform.