Three straight starts against the best teams in the National League — the Brewers, Dodgers and Phillies — and Chris Sale‘s numbers are hard to look away from: 1.71 ERA, 24 strikeouts and just 1 walk in 21 innings. On Thursday in Philadelphia, he outdueled Cristopher Sánchez to improve to 14-9 with a 2.10 ERA, second-best in the NL behind only Jacob Misiorowski. The Cy Young crown still belongs to someone else — but the window just cracked open.
Three Elite Opponents, One Walk Total
On September 4th, Sale went six innings at Citizens Bank Park against the Phillies: two runs, seven strikeouts, one walk. Atlanta won 5-2 and pushed its NL East lead to four games over Philadelphia — which fell to 79-62 — with 22 games left in the season.
Before that, on August 27th, Sale threw a complete-game shutout against the Dodgers: 9 innings, 0 runs, 11 strikeouts and 0 walks, touching 100.1 mph against Shohei Ohtani. It was his first complete game since 2019 and the first time since 2018 he’s eclipsed 100 mph, per Statcast.
Put the three starts together and the picture is striking: 21 innings against three of the NL’s top clubs, a 1.71 ERA and near-perfect command of the strike zone.
The Cy Young Race: Favorite, Challenger and One Bad Night in Chicago
Jacob Misiorowski, the 24-year-old lefty from the Milwaukee Brewers, remains the frontrunner: 1.97 ERA and a 0.732 WHIP on the season. In a recent expert poll, Sale ranked third in voting with 113 points and zero first-place votes. On paper, Misiorowski is in command.
But «on paper» just got more complicated. Misiorowski had his worst start of the season in his last outing against the Cubs, surrendering five runs. Sale, meanwhile, strung together a complete-game shutout and a win over Philadelphia’s ace in a series with divisional-title stakes. The late-season narrative is shifting.
Sale won the 2024 NL Cy Young at 18-3 with a 2.38 ERA, leading the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts — the first NL pitching Triple Crown since Clayton Kershaw in 2011. He knows what it takes, and he knows how to close out a season.
In 2026, with Sale sitting in the 97th percentile in walk rate and 94th percentile in strikeout rate per Statcast, the question is no longer whether he belongs in the conversation. The question is whether voters see what the numbers see.
Atlanta vs. Philadelphia: The Division Race and the Award Are Running on the Same Track
The Braves and Phillies meet six more times over the next nine days. Atlanta leads the NL East by four games, but a sweep in either direction would shake things up dramatically with 22 games to play. Sale isn’t just chasing an individual trophy — he’s the primary reason his team has that cushion in the first place.
Sale’s 2026 Season by the Numbers
14-9 · 2.10 ERA · 1.01 WHIP · 184 strikeouts · 29 walks · 150 innings · 25 starts. At age 37.
- xERA: 3.06
- Average fastball: 96 mph with 2,323 rpm spin rate
- Whiff rate: 30.1%
- Opponent batting average: .219
- Average exit velocity allowed: 87.9 mph
- Barrel rate allowed: 5.9%
How He Ranks League-Wide (Statcast Percentiles)
- xERA: 88th percentile
- Strikeout rate (K%): 94th percentile — elite
- Walk rate (BB%): 97th percentile — elite
- Whiff %: 85th percentile
- Fastball velocity: 75th percentile
- xwOBA against: 88th percentile
- Barrels avoided: 77th percentile
The final stretch will tell us whether that’s enough to move the votes.
