When the Atlanta Braves traded for injury-plagued pitcher Chris Sale on Dec. 30, they got a 35-year-old who had six consecutive top-five American League Cy Young Award finishes through 2018, but one who hadn’t stayed healthy in any of the five seasons since, nor received even a single down-ballot Cy Young Award vote in that span.
That’s why it was even more significant when the fiery left-hander didn’t just regain elite status among MLB pitchers in 2024, but was so much better than any other starter that he won his first Cy Young Award on Wednesday — and by a nearly unanimous vote by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
In his 14th season and first in the National League, Sale won the award by a wide margin over the Philadelphia Phillies’ Zack Wheeler, receiving 26 of the 30 first-place votes on his way to 198 points while Wheeler got four first-place votes and totaled 130 points. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes finished third (53 points) in the Cy Young Award balloting two days after winning NL Rookie of the Year. The San Diego Padres’ Dylan Cease was fourth with 45 points.
The announcement came a week after Sale was named NL Comeback Player of the Year. Neither award was a surprise considering he was the first NL triple crown winner — the league leader in wins, ERA and strikeouts — since the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw in 2011.
Sale led the majors with an 18-3 record and 2.38 ERA and led the NL with 225 strikeouts in 177 2/3 innings over 29 starts — three strikeouts behind MLB leader Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers, the presumptive American League Cy Young Award winner.
It was Sale’s most starts and innings since 2017. From 2020 through 2023 he was 11-7 with a 3.93 ERA in just 31 total starts and 151 innings for the Boston Red Sox.
Sale won the Braves’ eighth Cy Young Award, second only to the Dodgers’ 12 since the awards were first presented in 1956. It’s Atlanta’s first Cy since another lefty, Tom Glavine, won in 1998, his second and the sixth in eighth years for Atlanta during a remarkable run by Hall of Famers Glavine, Greg Maddux and John Smoltz.
In mid-September, after Sale broke Glavine’s franchise single-season record for strikeouts by a lefty and became the first Braves lefty with 200 Ks in a season, Glavine commended Sale for defying skeptics who didn’t think he could stay healthy all summer. Glavine praised his impact on and off the field.
“He’s been obviously really, really big for the full rotation not just in terms of production,” Glavine said. “I know he’s been a huge influence on a lot of those young guys, too. You can’t put a price tag on that.”
After coming close so many times in the American League, Chris Sale broke through and won his first Cy Young Award at age 35. (Orlando Ramirez / Getty Images)
About that price tag: To get Sale, Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos traded infielder Vaughn Grissom to the Red Sox, who also sent $17 million to Atlanta to offset Sale’s $27.5 million salary in 2024 in the final year of his contract.
That salary included $10 million deferred to 2039, meaning the Braves would’ve owed him only $500,000 in 2024, then $10 million in another 15 years. But five days after trading for Sale, Anthopoulos signed him to a two-year, $38 million contract that superseded the previous deal and gave Sale salaries of $16 million in 2024 and $22 million in 2025, plus an $18 million club option for 2026 with no buyout.
“It turned out to be a genius move, right?” Glavine said before smiling.
When the contract was announced, many around baseball thought it risky given Sale’s injuries and age. No one called it a genius move then.
Sale had convinced Anthoopoulos and the Braves that he was fully healed from a shoulder issue that caused him to miss two months in 2023 — the latest in an inventory of injuries, including Tommy John surgery in 2019 — and that he was fired up to help his team. He thought that would be the Red Sox, but by year’s end it was the Braves, and Sale was determined to be at his best for a team that had World Series aspirations and had given him a vote of confidence.
He credited Braves trainers and the team’s pitching plan for keeping him healthier than he’d been since his extended run of dominance with the Red Sox and Chicago White Sox, back when he went 99-59 with a 2.91 ERA from 2012-18 while averaging 30 starts, 198 innings and 240 strikeouts per season.
That stretch began with a sixth-place Cy Young Award finish in 2012 with Chicago, followed by the six top-five finishes, including a runner-up feat in 2017, when Sale went 17-8 with a 2.90 ERA and led the majors in innings (214 1/3) and strikeouts (308). He finished as the Cy Young Award runner-up behind Cleveland’s Corey Kluber that year.
With the new contract in place, the Braves believed they added frontline depth and some cost certainty beyond 2024, when they knew that Max Fried and Charlie Morton would be free agents. At the same time, it gave Sale a chance to focus entirely on pitching and not worry about pitching in a free-agent walk year after so many injuries. But even Anthopoulos conceded by late July that Sale had surpassed all expectations.
The Braves were careful to give him an extra day or two of rest between starts for most of the season, and Sale stayed healthy until late September. Being scratched just before his scheduled start in a season-ending doubleheader against the New York Mets and missing the Wild Card Series that began the next day left a bitter taste for Sale. He took pride in not missing starts and pitching deep into games, giving his team a chance to win almost every time he pitched.
He and the Braves said he would’ve been available had the Braves advanced past the first round, and Sale threw a bullpen session at Truist Park two days after the Braves were eliminated — to give the team and himself peace of mind going into the offseason, knowing his back issue was nothing more serious than spasms.
Missing that final regular-season start cost him a chance to be the first MLB pitching triple crown winner in nearly two decades, since Johan Santana in 2006. But for Sale, that meant nothing compared to his disappointment over not being available to pitch when his team needed him at the end.
So, after winning the first Cy Young Award of his illustrious career, there shouldn’t be any lack of motivation for Sale, not that there might’ve been anyway. Other Braves said he was as good of a teammate as they ever had and the most competitive and driven person they’d ever been around.
As veteran first baseman Matt Olson said: “He’s a bulldog on the mound, he prepares the right way and pitches his ass off.”
(Photo: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
