Chris Sale keeps building a résumé that already had plenty of weight on it, and Friday night gave him another line for the ledger.
The Braves left-hander worked six innings against the D-backs at Truist Park, gave up just one run and walked off with a 2.16 ERA. That mark sits second among qualified MLB pitchers this season, with only Jacob Misiorowski ahead at 1.76. Sale’s push for a second Cy Young Award in three seasons may be running into Misiorowski’s surge, but the veteran is still stacking up numbers that put him in rare company.
The lone run against Sale came in the first inning. Corbin Carroll doubled, moving Geraldo Perdomo to third, and Perdomo scored on Gabriel Moreno’s groundout. The play was initially scored as an error on Mauricio Dubón, who charged in on the ball and slipped as he tried to make the catch.
Even with that run on the board, Sale reached a class of his own. He became one of just seven pitchers of the Live Ball Era, which began in 1920, to post a 2.20 ERA or better through the first 22 starts of an age-37-or-older season. The only others on that list are Spud Chandler in 1946, Dutch Leonard in 1948, Kevin Brown in 2003, Roger Clemens in 2005, Max Scherzer in 2022 and Justin Verlander in 2022.
Sale also piled up nine strikeouts, pushing his season total to 160. That ranks eighth in the Majors and keeps him in position for what would be his ninth career 200-strikeout season.
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