Best-case scenario answers to what-ifs and hypotheticals are rarely the easy answers, especially for those who throw a baseball for a living. So it was never very likely that the what-ifs and hypotheticals surrounding Chris Sale and his potential return to a Hall of Fame path after he underwent Tommy John surgery in March 2020 would involve a rapid return to form.
But five challenging and circuitous seasons later, Sale finally got a chance to deliver something closely resembling the best-case scenario — and all but cemented his Cooperstown candidacy in the process.
A comeback story unlike any other was officially capped off Wednesday night, when Sale earned his first Cy Young Award. The 35-year-old left-hander, the overwhelming favorite after winning the NL triple crown by leading the Senior Circuit in wins, strikeouts and ERA for the Braves, received 26 of 30 first-place votes to easily outpace Phillies ace Zack Wheeler.
“This wasn’t some easy (journey),” Sale said on a Zoom call with Braves reporters shortly after the announcement. “If I woudl’ve won it years ago, maybe. But this wasn’t an easy way to get to winning this trophy for the first time, or this award.”
Things weren’t easy for Sale even during his peak from 2013 through 2018, though the degree of difficulty was nothing like he’d experience over the five-year period from 2019 through 2023.
Sale led the AL in strikeouts, ERA and WHIP while ranking among the top five in wins and innings from 2013 through 2018, when he recorded six straight top-5 finishes in the Cy Young balloting but never won the award. The Hall of Fame-bound Max Scherzer won in 2013 and late bloomers Corey Kluber (2014 and 2017), Dallas Keuchel (2015) and Rick Porcello (2016) outlasted Sale before Blake Snell earned the honors in his age-25 season in 2018.
Sale completed his age-29 season in 2018, which seemingly gave him plenty of time to collect the Cy Young that would further solidify his Hall of Fame case. Every pitcher with at least six top-5 Cy Young finishes won the award at least once except Mike Mussina and all-time strikeout king Nolan Ryan. And every retired pitcher with at least six top-5 Cy Young finishes is in the Hall of Fame except the steroid-tainted Roger Clemens (a record 10 top-5 Cy Young finishes).
But Sale’s next five seasons were about as nightmarish as possible. After battling left elbow pain throughout the 2019 season, he underwent Tommy John surgery shortly after the pandemic started. Sale went 5-1 with a 3.16 ERA in nine late-season starts in 2021, but any hopes of making a relatively prompt return to his ace-caliber ways disappeared amidst a litany of injuries — a right rib stress fracture, a broken left pinkie finger and a broken right wrist in 2022 and a stress reaction in his left shoulder blade in 2023.
The injuries and ineffectiveness (he was 17-18 with a 4.16 ERA from 2019 through 2023) didn’t diminish Sale’s stature amongst his contemporaries. Among pitchers still active at the end of 2023, Sale ranked third in ERA, behind only Clayton Kershaw and Jacob deGrom, and fifth in both strikeouts and WAR, per Baseball-Reference.
Yet while modern Hall of Fame voters will likely be less reliant on awards and milestones and more likely to vote based on how candidates stacked up to their peers, Mussina’s long road to Cooperstown — he debuted on the ballot with 20.3 percent of the vote in 2014 before earning enshrinement in his sixth year of eligibility in 2019 — suggested the Hall of Fame path for Sale was narrowing as his peak grew dimmer in the rear view mirror.
The Braves didn’t anticipate getting the Hall of Fame version of Sale when they acquired him from the Red Sox in exchange for shortstop Vaughn Grissom and then signed him to an extension through 2025 with a club option for 2026. dominated over 29 starts and 177 innings — two fewer starts and 26 more innings than the previous three seasons combined — while compiling 6.2 in WAR to increase his career total to 53.4.
Sale’s fourth-place standing among active pitchers in WAR didn’t change, but the surge and subsequent Cy Young vaulted him closer to the Hall of Fame-bound trio of Justin Verlander, Kershaw and Scherzer while creating some distance between Sale and the duo of Gerrit Cole and deGrom, each of whom have put together a Cooperstown-worthy peak but whose resumes need burnishing.
Given his injury-wracked past, Sale has a better reason than most Hall of Fame-caliber players to be reluctant to evaluate his Cooperstown chances.
“I mean, heck, I had the first healthy season in, like, five years — now we’re talking about the Hall of Fame?” Sale said Wednesday night. “I’m just appreciative I got through this one and I want to enjoy this moment and soak it in.”
He may not want to read it, but the comeback season was doubly valuable for Sale’s Hall of Fame pursuit. In addition to adding the Cy Young to his trophy case, Sale also got within striking distance of the hypothetical post-Tommy John statistics that we surmised he’d need to compile post-surgery — a pretty impressive feat considering all the time he missed from 2021-23. From the piece posted Mar. 29, 2020:
Sale, as we noted, will hopefully be 31 years old the next time he takes a big league mound. He’s probably not going to throw 667 2/3 innings in a three-year span — he didn’t even do that during his peak — but what if he produces a 3.00 ERA over his next 575 big league innings while maintaining something close to his previous strikeout ratios…say, a mere nine strikeouts per nine innings instead of almost 11 whiffs per nine? That’ll give Sale a 3.02 ERA over 10-11 full seasons as a starter to go along with almost 2,600 strikeouts in just over 2,200 innings.
Sale is 29-10 with a 3.09 ERA with 407 strikeouts over 328 2/3 innings — an average of 11.1 strikeouts per nine innings, which matches his career-long rate — since returning from the surgery.
Two more seasons like the one he just had — let’s say Sale averages 200 strikeouts over 162 innings per season over the next two years, which are excellent numbers but would also represent an understandable slight decline for a pitcher in his age-36 and age-37 seasons — would put him over 2,800 strikeouts over nearly 2,300 innings while presumably keeping him around his current ERA of 3.04. Going back to the Mar. 29, 2020 piece:
Here’s a full list of the pitchers with a sub-3.05 ERA, at least 2,600 strikeouts and at least 2,200 innings pitched: Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson and Pedro Martinez.
Every pitcher in that group is in the Hall of Fame — a destination that is within view for Sale following a roundabout route nobody could have envisioned in 2020, never mind earlier.
“That’s a decision for other people to make, really,” Sale said. “My job doesn’t change one way or the other, right? If it ended tomorrow, I’ve got no chance. I’ve got a lot of work to do if that’s the case.”
Or maybe not nearly as much as he thinks.
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