NEW YORK -- How good has Chris Sale been through this season’s first four months? Well, his first 20 starts have conjured memories of some of those fantastic seasons Greg Maddux had during the 1990s.
Sale strengthened his Cy Young Award resume with a dominant effort against the Mets in the second game of Wednesday’s doubleheader, a 1-0 Atlanta win, at Citi Field. The Braves ace allowed two hits and notched nine strikeouts over six scoreless innings. He exited with a 2.08 ERA, which is the fifth lowest produced by an Atlanta pitcher through the first 20 starts of a season during the divisional era (since 1969).
Matt Olson’s sixth-inning RBI single served as the only support for Sale, who has held his opponent scoreless in three of his past four starts. The 37-year-old southpaw’s ERA ranks third in the Majors, trailing only the Brewers’ Jacob Misiorowski (1.58) and the Yankees’ Cam Schlittler (2.04), both of whom are more than a decade younger.
So what other Braves have produced a sub-2.10 ERA through the first 20 starts of any season going back to 1969? Well, Reynaldo López had a 2.05 ERA at this point in 2024. Then you had Greg Maddux with a 1.57 ERA in 1998, Maddux with a 1.96 ERA in 1995 and Maddux with a 1.75 ERA in 1994. That’s the list Sale has now joined.
A couple of things worth noting. Maddux won his fourth consecutive National League Cy Young Award in 1995, and he was just 32 during that 1998 season, which ended with him finishing fourth in Cy Young balloting, trailing teammate Tom Glavine, Trevor Hoffman and Kevin Brown.
Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz are three of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. But they weren’t doing what Sale is doing for the Braves at 37. In fact, few pitchers have done what the 2024 NL Cy Young Award winner has done through the first two-thirds of a season at this age.
Sale is one of six pitchers to post a sub-2.10 ERA through the first 20 starts of an age-37 season or older since 1920. The others are:
2022 Justin Verlander (1.73)
2005 Roger Clemens (1.40)
1948 Dutch Leonard (1.95)
1946 Spud Chandler (1.75)
1942 Ted Lyons (2.10)