It was not that long ago that Chris Sale was a topic of concern for fans of the Atlanta Braves. His velocity was down, his stuff didn’t look right, and the results expected of him certainly weren’t there. Through his first five starts this season, Sale had a brutal 6.17 ERA and while his peripherals were significantly better than that, some still wondered if he was hurt or if Father Time had finally caught up with him. However, Sale’s performance in the month of May changed all of that.
Sale’s turnaround began in late April where he had two good starts including a 10 strikeout game against the truly horrid Rockies. Colorado is so bad that it was feasible to think that shutting them down almost didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but pitching well at Coors Field is really tough and Sale did look better there.
Once the calendar turned to May, we got to see the Chris Sale that dominated the league last season in route to the NL Cy Young award. If his dominant performance against the Brewers on Monday is any indication, the best may be yet to come.
Chris Sale looked like a Cy Young contender in the month of May
There were a few pitchers that looked really good in May including the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal (he always looks good), the Pirates’ Bailey Falter, the Giants’ Robbie Ray, and the Reds’ Andrew Abbott. Sale was as good or better than any of them even if the calendar broke down in such a way that he only made five starts last month which kept him from climbing the WAR leaderboard.
In those five starts in May, Sale posted a miniscule 1.11 ERA in 32.1 innings of work. In all of MLB, only Abbott (0.55 ERA), Kris Bubic (0.56 ERA), and Falter (0.76 ERA) were better among qualified starters. His 2.61 FIP wasn’t quite as dominant, but it was still very strong at 12th in baseball and his strikeout rate among starters was in the top 10. Top to bottom, Sale was simply awesome and seems to have put his early season issues behind him.
The rough start to 2025 put Sale in a bit of a hole, but he is very quickly putting himself right back into the Cy Young discussion once again. Competition is going to be tough as Paul Skenes is throwing the crap out of the ball despite his team giving him zero run support and Logan Webb has looked really good as well. However, if Sale is already top 5 in the National League in fWAR among starters even with the crummy start, don’t be surprised if he overtakes the field pretty soon at this rate.
