Rarely do you ever find a pitcher who’s truly unbelievable. Yes, you can get some good ones, like Johnny Cueto and Jake Arrieta. But what I’m talking about are players like Clayton Kershaw and well, Sale. Now I know Sale may seem really solid, but one of the greatest ever sounds insane. Well, obviously he’s not there yet, but if he keeps up how he’s been pitching for the last near-decade then he definitely could be there. He already has some reasons for being there.
Let me start this by talking about Sale’s career. Sale is 29 years old and has been a pitcher for 9 years. 2 of these years saw him in the bullpen and the other 7 are seeing him as a starter. He has spent 5 years as a starter and his bullpen tenure on the White Sox and has spent his last 2 years on the Red Sox as he was traded there. His career stats include a 101-62 record, 2.92 ERA, 1,740 strikeouts, 334 walks, and a .218 BAA in 1,453.1 innings pitched and 280 games/200 games started. 147 out of his 200 starts have been quality which means he has a 73.5% chance to pitch a quality start based on career stats.
One of these reasons would be how many strikeouts Sale has in the history of baseball. Keep in mind, this man isn’t even 30 years old yet. Sale is 29 and he has 1,740 career MLB strikeouts. He ranks 122nd in MLB history out of a list of 1,000 pitchers in MLB history! He’s not even 30 yet! Although guys like Zack Greinke and Cole Hamels rank 48th and 50th with 2,360 and 2,336 strikeouts, they’re 34 years old and have been pitching for 13 years each as starters. Sale has been pitching for 7 years as a starter and has only about 600 less strikeouts than each!
I will interrupt this for a few facts about his career that will improve on this argument but they’re realistically just some cool facts to know. The first one is that after Sale’s recent start against the Rangers, he has had his 42nd career game with 10 or more strikeouts and 1 or 0 walks, tying Kershaw, who’s pitched 11 years as a starter, for 6th out of every MLB starter in history! Max Scherzer is 5th at 45, but he’s 33 and has been pitching as a starter for 10 years. Most players on that list are retired hall of famers, but Sale is the only pitcher under 30 on that list in the top 10!
The other fact is much shorter to digest. Sale is a strikeout monster, we’ve all known this and anyone who’s ever watched him definitely knows it. So far this year, he’s been averaging over 13 strikeouts per 9 innings pitched this year. The only two qualifing starting pitchers except for Sale who have averaged that in the history of baseball are 1999 Pedro Martinez and 2001 Randy Johnson.
Another potentially historically great part of Sale is his control. As a pitcher for 9 years, as he had two years in the bullpen back in 2010 and 2011 with the White Sox, he has a career strikeouts to walks of 5.21. As a starter, he has a career strikeouts to walks of 5.48. This is extremely important. For example, 4,875 career strikeouts hall of famer Randy Johnson had a 2.13 in his first 7 years. Pedro Martinez in his first 7 years had a 4.40. I get these pitchers have likely pitched a few more years, but the fact that Sale has a SO/BB 1 above each of these hall of fame pitchers after his first 7 years as a starter is very fascinating.
Another extremely fascinating and incredible stat for Sale are his walks. In the list of the top 998 pitchers in walks in the history of baseball, Sale ranks above 998! The 998th pitcher is Joe Wood, who had a career walk count of 421. Sale meanwhile has an incredible 334 walks in his 9 years as a pitcher and 297 in his first 7 as a starter. These 297 walks in his years as a starter are absolutely incredible. He has less walks in his time as a starter than hall of fame righty Bob Gibson had in his first 3 years as a starter as he had 310. Martinez, who’s considered one of the greatest pitchers ever, had more walks than Sale after 6 years, which is really solid, but still not even as good as Sale!
My final argument here will be Sale’s stats per 9 innings. These really tell a lot for a pitcher, as it shows your averages for strikeouts and walks if you manage to pitch 9 innings. The first one of these stats are his career strikeouts per 9 innings which is exactly 10.78. It means he strikes out about 1.2 batters per inning. His walks per 9 innings is also incredible at exactly 2.07. This means he walks about 0.23 batters each inning. This is absolutely unreal and it shows how his control is incredible and his pitches are very good.
Finally, I will talk about his hits and home runs per 9 innings. His hits per 9 innings include a 7.26, which means that he gives up about 0.81 hits per inning, so some innings he won’t even give up a hit at all. His home runs per 9 innings is also unreal at 0.91 homers per 9 innings. Basically he gives up about 0.10 homers each inning and what makes it even better is that he might not even give up a homer during the 9 inning period, as it’s lower than 1!
My argument will end there on why Chris Sale might be one of the greatest pitchers in MLB history. I think it’s enough for a person to realize how spectacular of a pitcher this man is and how rare it is to see someone like this. Sure you’ll have your guys like Cole Hamels and Zack Greinke for example who are really solid, but Chris Sale crosses that line into a pitcher you could watch for 10 years and each time you watch be as impressed as you were the first time you’d seen him. Sale is a stud pitcher not only between all active pitchers, but between every pitcher in the history of the MLB.
The MLB Enthusiast 