Things were not looking perfect for Chris Sale‘s bid to win his first Cy Young Award going into Wednesday night. Despite the Bovada odds, and for all the denigration that Rick Porcello has gotten as a candidate driven forward by his fortuitous win-loss record, his ERA was all of 0.05 higher than Sale’s, and they had the exact same number of innings (Sale had racked up the total in two fewer starts, but whose fault is that, Chris?).
Sale’s main selling points were thus reduced to track record (he’s probably better than Porcello this year, because he’s always been better!), and metrics showing he’s preventing runs in a more traditionally stable fashion: striking out lots of people. However, it would be odd for that to be his selling point in a year where his strikeout rate has taken a purposeful step back, and it might be too soon yet for Sale’s commanding lead in DRA and cFIP to play a huge factor in BBWAA voting.
In this context, trying to fend off a 21-game winner (and counting) who is helping to lead a potential AL East division winner, getting shelled by the Philadelphia Phillies for six runs–in an NL park!–and driven out in measly four innings is a pretty disastrous setback. Despite all the concern about Sale’s admittedly hyper-aggressive workload of recent, his raw stuff crackled Wednesday; sitting mid-90s and showing too much movement on his slider if anything, since he ultimately could not command it at all.
And maybe it’s been awhile since he has truly. As impressive as the strength and endurance Sale has shown in this second half, the statistical note that the now six-straight games of allowing two or more runs represents the longest streak of his career drills down on the sense that we have not seen Sale at his absolute sharpest–at least not compared to his own impossible standards–in a while, and that a clunker was possible given his frequent recent lapses. He’s now out of the top-five in ERA in the AL, and he’ll likely cede his innings lead. He’s had worse win-loss records, at least.
Obviously Sale could turn around and spin back-to-back no-hitters to close the season, and that could shift the Cy Young narrative a bit, but this mostly feels like another derailment happening too late to fix in time, and that’s dispiriting for a number of reasons. Sale’s conservation plan was clearly geared toward a postseason run, so an actual recognition of his awesome but frequently obscure career in an award chase seemed like a decent consolation, even if the man himself remains publicly pretty dismissive of it.
Most immediately, it snuffs out one of the few still vibrant and enthralling elements of a White Sox season that has little to do but writhe around in its own pooled disappointment, until its merciful end and hopefully meaningful offseason.
Lead Image Credit: Eric Hartline // USA Today Sports Images