Sale finishes third in NL Cy Young voting, his fourth top-three finish
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ATLANTA -- Chris Sale’s Hall of Fame résumé has been strengthened by another top-three finish in Cy Young Award balloting.
Sale finished third in voting for the 2026 National League Cy Young Award on Wednesday night. Brewers phenom Jacob Misiorowski was the unanimous winner, and the Phillies’ Cristopher Sánchez finished second in balloting conducted by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
Sale received 11 of the 30 second-place votes, 16 third-place votes and three fourth-place votes. This was the fourth top-three finish for the 2024 NL Cy Young Award winner. He has finished within the top six nine times going back to ‘12.
Sale ranked second in the NL in ERA (2.16), third in WHIP (0.98), fourth in strikeouts (200) and sixth in batting average allowed (.215).
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Sánchez led the Majors with 22 quality starts over 33 starts. Sale had 19 quality starts over 27 starts, resulting in a 70.4% quality start rate. The only pitcher to produce a better percentage over 20 starts or more was the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto (22 of 28, or 78.6%).
Sale struggled in his third start, allowing six runs over four-plus innings against the Angels on April 12. He then produced a 1.96 ERA over the 24 starts that followed. He constructed his finest outing on Aug. 27, when he recorded 11 strikeouts during a five-hit shutout of the Dodgers.
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Sale secured his 200th strikeout against the final batter he faced during his regular-season finale against the Reds. He joined his idol Randy Johnson as the only left-handed pitchers in MLB history who have recorded nine 200-plus-strikeout seasons. Nolan Ryan (15), Johnson (13), Roger Clemens (12) and Tom Seaver (10) are the only pitchers with more.