Red Sox: Chris Sale is deserving of first Cy Young award
The Red Sox have a lot to cherish in Chris Sale. He’s always pitching well but he deserves more than a large contract or a playoff appearance.
It’s about time that Chris Sale won the Cy Young award. He’s definitely put up a season to remember and what better way to finish his sophomore season with the Boston Red Sox than with his first Cy Young award?
You heard that right. Sale has already had a great career. He’s not even 30 years old yet and he has more than 100 wins and more than 1,500 strikeouts. Despite this, he’s never won the Cy Young award. He came close last year finishing second but that was it.
Right now his only real competitor looks to be Justin Verlander. Even though Verlander is doing incredibly well, he’s had his time. Not only did he win the award in 2011, but he also won MVP that season. It’s time for Sale to get a shot at his first. The first thing Sale needs to do if he wants to win is keep his ERA low and the second is to try to recover from the loss of strikeouts due to time on the DL.
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In fact, had he gone through the entire season injury free, it’s very possible he could have set a new career best for strikeouts. His K/9 is currently 0.6 points higher than it was last year, meaning he could have reached 320 or more. That might have been enough to guarantee him the award.
Even without cracking 300 strikeouts for the second year in a row, Sale is still one of the best in the category. Despite missing multiple starts, he’s already recorded 200 strikeouts for the sixth consecutive season and he might be able to crack 250 for the third time.
This is really the only category in which Verlander has a clear advantage and that’s only because of how many extra starts he has over Sale. Verlander already surpassed 30 starts and has 258 strikeouts. Despite the high amount, his K/9 rate is 11.9, which is nearly 2 lower than Sale’s.
Right now, it looks like the battle between Sale and Verlander is very similar to what’s going on in the National League between Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer. deGrom has a huge ERA advantage while Scherzer has a huge strikeout advantage. Both Sale and deGrom have also lost a small number of innings due to injury which cost them some strikeouts.
But other than total strikeouts, it looks like Sale is the leader everywhere else. Entering Tuesday, his ERA is 1.97, and if he can keep it below 2 it may be difficult not to pick him. Verlander’s ERA is 2.72. While it’s nearly a whole point higher than Sale’s, it’s his lowest ERA since 2012. Once Sale comes back off the DL, it’s possible that he can get knocked around a bit as he works his way back up, but his ERA should stay roughly the same.
In addition to keeping runners from scoring, Sale has been doing a fantastic job at keeping runners off base to begin with. His WHIP stands at only 0.849. This leads all of baseball and is the first time his WHIP has ever been below 0.9. If it can stay below, it will be his career best by a good amount. Verlander’s WHIP is 0.944.
If whoever votes says that the difference in strikeouts is the deal breaker, then Verlander probably will get the award. However, if they do look into every stat and look into what Sale has been doing on a per game basis, then it would be a no-brainer for Sale to be picked.
He’s having overall much better numbers this year than when he finished second in 2017 so it would definitely be a well-earned accomplishment but it’s not over yet. He still has to get through a couple more starts and keep his streak going if he wants to taste the glory.