Chris Sale’s season is starting to look like the kind of run that forces a rethink.
On Thursday in Atlanta, the Braves left-hander overpowered the Dodgers in a sweep-clinching shutout, and he did it with two of his hardest pitches since 2018. That kind of outing doesn’t just add another win to the ledger - it throws gasoline on the conversation about where this year sits among the best of his Hall of Fame career.
“He's throwing harder than he ever has at 37 years old, and you can make an argument as great a career as he's having, he's as good now as he's ever been,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said. “It’s just mind-boggling.”
Sale’s path to this point makes the season even louder. Not long ago, injuries had knocked his career off track and limited him to 151 innings from 2020-23.
The Red Sox then sent him and $17 million to Atlanta during the 2023 holiday season. Since arriving with the Braves, he has posted a 2.33 ERA over 74 appearances, including 73 starts.
The latest gem was as complete as it gets. Sale went the distance, allowed five hits and struck out 11.
That made him the first pitcher age 37 or older to pile up at least 11 strikeouts in a shutout since R.A. Dickey did it for the Mets on June 18, 2012.
Sale’s version came with a radar gun reading that separated it from Dickey’s knuckleball night.
The velocity popped at key moments, too. When Sale punched out Shohei Ohtani in the third inning, he reached 100-plus mph - no rounding up - for just the 15th time in his career.
Eight of those pitches came when he was a 21-year-old rookie, six more arrived in 2018, and this one showed up at 37. He also blew Ohtani away with a 99.6 mph pitch on a fifth-inning strikeout.
Since the start of 2018, the 2024 NL Cy Young Award winner has thrown a pitch that hard 21 times. Since the start of 2019, the only two thrown at that speed were both fired to Ohtani on Thursday.
“[Ohtani’s] doing stuff no one's ever seen,” Sale said. “He's probably the best I've ever seen. When you're facing the best, you’ve got to bring the best.”
The numbers around the season make the case even stronger. Sale is second in the Majors with a 2.06 ERA, which would be the best mark he has ever posted as a starter, edging the 2.11 ERA he logged over 27 starts in 2018.
His 203 ERA+ is second only to the 209 he put up in 2018, with his next-best figures coming in at 174 during his Cy Young season two years ago and 173 in 2014. That 203 ERA+ means he has been 103 percent better than the average pitcher this season.
The strikeout total is still piling up, even if it won’t match the towering numbers from his biggest workload years. Sale has 177 strikeouts, seventh-most in MLB, and with four starts likely left, there’s a path for him to become just the ninth pitcher ever to record nine 200-strikeout seasons. The only current left-hander in that group is his childhood idol, Randy Johnson.
His strikeout rate has dipped from the last two seasons - 30.7 percent compared with 32.4 in 2025 and 32.1 in 2024 - but it still sits among the best age-37 seasons ever. In fact, it’s the fourth-best strikeout rate ever posted by a pitcher that old or older. The only better marks belong to Johnson, who had 37.4 percent in 2001 and 32.3 percent in 2002, and Nolan Ryan, who posted 30.9 in 1987.
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