Sale finishes outside the top-5 on Cy Young ballot
Hey, they can’t all be positive predictions. Following a season in which almost everything went right for the Red Sox, it stands to reason that something significant will go wrong this year. The biggest red flag entering the season is Chris Sale.
Sale hasn’t finished outside the top-five for the AL Cy Young award since 2012 when he came in sixth place. He’s been remarkably consistent as one of the game’s elite starting pitchers for essentially his entire career.
Last season was the first time we had reason to be concerned about the talented lefty. Sale was more brilliant than ever when he took the mound, dazzling to the tune of a 2.11 ERA and 13.5 K/9. It would have been the best season of a stellar career if it weren’t for shoulder inflammation that required two trips to the disabled list in the second half. He ended up making only 27 starts and was limited to 158 innings, his lowest workload since he was a rookie in 2011.
Sale’s production was so impressive that he still managed to finish fourth in Cy Young voting despite failing to meet the innings requirement to qualify for the ERA title. What happens if he regresses without a significant increase in his workload?
The highest ERA that Sale has ever posted was 3.34 in 2016 when he finished fifth in the Cy Young race. He also pitched a career-high 226 2/3 innings that season. It’s not unreasonable to predict that Sale could regress closer to that range rather than one that hovers just over 2.00.
Finishing with an ERA around 3.30 would still be excellent by most standards but it’s hard to imagine that putting Sale in the race unless he carries a heavy workload. Blake Snell won the award last season despite pitching only 180 2/3 innings but it took a spectacular 1.89 ERA to do it.
We expect that Sale will be healthy entering this season but the Red Sox are going to exercise extreme caution with their ace. They will keep a sharp eye on his pitch counts and may even skip his turn in the rotation on occasion. The season is a marathon, not a sprint for a team with postseason aspirations.
If Sale isn’t asked to be a 200+ inning workhorse then he’ll need to be among the league leaders in ERA to enter the Cy Young conversation. He’s obviously capable of that, having posted a sub-3.00 ERA in three of the last five years. That hardly makes him a lock to do so again in his age-30 season with lingering questions about his shoulder still hanging over him.