Sale faces White Sox tonight aiming to regain form after odd outing

Chris Sale is having another season worthy of Cy Young consideration, and on Wednesday the lefty will toe the rubber in the spot where his potential Hall of Fame career took off.

Sale (8-4, 2.23 ERA) will get the ball at Rate Field in Chicago as the surging Braves face the White Sox, the team that selected him in the first round of the 2010 MLB Draft and watched him develop into a five-time All-Star during his seven-year tenure on the South Side.

But unlike other times he's faced his former team in recent years, Sale will face a White Sox squad that's brimming with talent and right in the thick of the AL playoff hunt -- adding a new layer of drama to the matchup.

The Braves enter with MLB's best record and with the second-best ERA, and Sale has unsurprisingly been a big reason why. He's allowed more than three earned runs only once in 12 starts and has allowed one or no runs eight times while averaging six innings per start. Meanwhile, Sale's 86 strikeouts were tied for third-most in the NL entering the week.

In other words, he looks a lot like the pitcher the White Sox saw win 74 games and tally a 3.00 ERA from 2010-2016 before they traded him to the Red Sox in a deal that brought righty Michael Kopech and former top prospect Yoán Moncada to Chicago. While that may be a bummer for the White Sox and their fans now, they don't have much else to lament this season.

After three consecutive seasons of 100-plus losses -- including an MLB-record 121-loss campaign in 2024 -- the White Sox are back in the competitive fray in the AL Central and currently have a grip on an AL Wild Card spot. Though the team has cooled a bit to open June, it went 18-10 in May and had two five-game winning streaks.

Sale enters Wednesday's game coming off a surprisingly subpar outing by his standards. He surrendered 10 hits over 5 2/3 innings against the Blue Jays last week, but allowed only three earned runs in a 7-2 loss. It was the second consecutive start in which Sale failed to complete at least six innings, which he had done in each of his previous seven starts. It was also the first time he'd allowed a double-digit hit total since 2021.

But given that his four-seam fastball averaged 97 mph for a second straight outing -- his highest average velo since 2019 -- and that Toronto benefited from a lot of soft contact would seem to indicate that the outing was just a blip in an otherwise strong season for the 2024 NL Cy Young winner.

“You’ve got to chalk it up to just being one of those days, really,” Sale said afterward. “I just felt like anything that got put in play was a hit. My command was in and out at times. My stuff was pretty good, but it just seemed like they always found holes.”

Sale has made six career starts against the White Sox and is 2-2 with a 2.92 ERA. His last start against them came during his Cy Young campaign in 2024, when he pitched seven innings and struck out 11 but took the loss in a 1-0 White Sox win.

Of current White Sox players, only outfielder Randal Grichuk and catcher Drew Romo have faced Sale in the regular season. Grichuk is 6-for-27 (.222) with two homers and eight strikeouts, while Romo is 0-for-3 with a strikeout. Overall, the White Sox are 9-10 this season against left-handed starters.