The Underrated Chris Sale

Chris Sale has absolutely no chance of winning the American League Cy Young Award, and that’s no knock on him. It’s simply an acknowledgement that Felix HernandezJon Lester andCorey Kluber have also been outstanding this year, and they’ll throw about 50 more innings than Sale, considering he missed more than a month early in the season because of a sore left elbow.

Toss in pitchers such as Max ScherzerDavid PriceJames Shields — clearly, there’s no shortage of excellent AL starters these days, even with Yu Darvish and Masahiro Tanaka injured — and Sale might not even finish in the top five. But that is no excuse to allow his sensational season to go under the radar.

Sale isn’t just having a season that easily ranks him among the best pitchers in the league. Even including Wednesday’s rough outing, which finally pushed his ERA over 2.00, he’s having a season that’s nearly as dominant as the unquestioned best pitcher in baseball, the man who very well might win the NL’s MVP award as well as its Cy Young. Chris Sale isn’t doing everything that Clayton Kershaw is doing, but Sale has at least been in the ballpark.

Sale and Kershaw, both lefties, were born almost exactly one year apart — Sale is a year younger — and if you were to compare some of their more important stats, the similarities are a lot closer than you might realize.

The point here isn’t to suggest that Sale is as good as Kershaw, because he’s not. No pitcher is. Rather, it’s to note that while pitching in a home run park, in the DH league and in front of one of baseball’s most wretched defenses, Sale has put up a season that’s perhaps 80-85 percent of Kershaw’s amazing campaign, yet with just 10 percent of the recognition. They’re the only two pitchers in baseball with a strikeout rate of at least 30 percent, and since both are very good at limiting walks, that means they’re the two MLB leaders in K%-BB% as well. They allow nearly an identical number of home runs per fly balls, but since Sale is less of a ground ball pitcher than Kershaw, more of Sale’s fly balls leave the yard. That’s the main reason why Sale’s ERA and FIP are higher, but otherwise, they’re having very similar years, right down to the fact that they both spent time on the disabled list in April. And it’s also worth noting that not even the great Kershaw has been tougher on lefty hitters.

And here’s the thing: It’s not as if it’s just been this year. Sale pitched in relief for most of his first two seasons in the big leagues and moved into the rotation in 2012. Since then, he’s in the top three in the American League in WAR, K%, K%-BB%, ERA, xFIP and batting average against. How exactly is a tall, awkward lefty with one of the weirdest throwing motions in baseball managing to do all this?

Sale throws four pitches: a fastball, changeup, slider and sinker, though he has rarely used the sinker this year. His unique motion helps with deception, but the simple fact is that three of those pitches are outstanding. His two-seam fastball, which touches 95 miles per hour, has had the second-most right-to-left horizontal movement in baseball; only David Price’s has moved more, but there’s a big drop-off after that. Throwing a hard fastball is great, but throwing it with a lot of movement makes it almost impossible on the hitter, especially when you can place it exactly where you want. The scary thing is, as good as this pitch is — it’s ranked as the third-best fastball in baseball, per FanGraphs’ pitch values — Sale throws it just about 40 percent of the time, which makes his changeup and slider look even better.

That changeup, by the way, was only Sale’s fourth-most-used pitch in 2012; now he throws it more than any pitch but his fastball. The adjustment is partially due to a desire to maintain his health — the changeup is a little easier on his arm — but it’s also because it’s simply a fantastic pitch. It has the most horizontal movement in baseball — and it’s not close — but since it looks so similar and then drops, hitters have no chance.

Sale has thrown that changeup 771 times this year, and just 41 times has it turned into a hit, with a line against of .193/.216/.282 and 59 strikeouts. Against lefties, it’s all but unhittable; of the 74 times he’s thrown it to a lefty hitter, just three times has it turned into a hit, and two of those happened Wednesday (the other was Ichiro Suzuki’s single to right field on Aug. 24). Like the fastball, Sale’s change is rated as among the best in baseball.

You can do a lot with two good pitches. You can do a lot more with three, and Sale’s slider is more than just good. Like the other two, it has considerable movement, among the highest in baseball. Sale has thrown the slider less often this year as he has used the change more, but it’s still devastating; hitters have a .136/.197/.229 line against it. It’s mostly his put-away pitch against lefties; he’s used the slider 54 percent of the time when the hitter has two strikes.

Bright future on the South Side?

The fourth-place White Sox are going to have a losing record for the fourth time in six seasons, and they haven’t been to the playoffs since 2008. That doesn’t mean things aren’t looking up, thanks to an impressive young core. Everyone knows about Jose Abreu, the slam-dunk Rookie of the Year choice in the American League, who is just 27 and has been one of the two best hitters in baseball in terms of wRC+. Outfielder Adam Eaton, 25, was stolen from Arizona last winter and has shown he can handle center field and get on base; fellow outfielder Avisail Garcia, obtained in last year’s Jake Peavy deal, is just 23 and has already proved to be a league-average hitter, though he’ll need to stay healthy and improve his questionable defense.

Plus, Sale isn’t alone in the rotation. Jose Quintana, just 25, has proved to be a legitimate middle-of-the-rotation starter in more than 500 big league innings, and 21-year-old first-round pick Carlos Rodon should spend most of 2015 in the White Sox rotation. As the team moves out of the Paul Konerko era, Chicago’s new-generation stars are moving in.

They’ll still need some help to contend, but they won’t need an ace. They already have that in Sale, one of the most fascinating — and dominant — pitchers in baseball.





Mike Petriello used to write here, and now he does not. Find him at @mike_petriello or MLB.com.

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