After being traded from the Boston Red Sox to the Atlanta Braves at the end of December, southpaw Chris Sale will spend longer in Georgia than he probably anticipated after signing a two-year, $38 million contract with the franchise earlier this month.
In 2024, Sale will join a Braves rotation that also features Max Fried, Spencer Strider, Bryce Elder and Charlie Morton. The oldest pitcher in the rotation, 40-year-old Morton, is fired up to have Chris Sale in Atlanta.
“Watching him on the field, how he conducts himself, he’s an animal,” Morton asserted about his new teammate, per The Athletic's David O'Brien. “And I’ve heard nothing but great things about him off the field.”
Sale's two-year pact includes an $18 million club option for the 2026 season, meaning he could be a member of the NL East dwellers for three full campaigns.
“We feel like this is the first normal offseason [Sale] will have had in a long time,” Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos said after bringing Sale to Atlanta, per MLB.com's Mark Bowman.
“But at the same time, he’s still coming off just a hundred innings pitched last year, so we’ll be mindful of that. We don’t put limits on any of our starters, but we do take it day by day if guys need to skip a bullpen or need extra days between starts.”
Chris Sale looking to put struggles in past
Sale has struggled to stay healthy with the Red Sox over the past few years. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2020, and in 2022, dealt with both a rib fracture and right wrist fracture.
It's clear he isn't the same player that was a top-six vote for the American League Cy Young Award for seven straight seasons between 2012 to 2018, per Bowman. Still, the hope in Atlanta is that there's still some good baseball to come from the 34-year-old Floridian.
“Sale’s injury woes continued last season as he spent time on the shelf with a stress reaction to his left scapula,” wrote Bowman.
“He ended up posting a 4.30 ERA over 20 starts. He had a 3.92 ERA in the nine starts he made after returning from the IL in August. Though Sale’s workload will be closely monitored, the Braves plan on having Sale in their rotation at the start of the season. In other words, they don’t believe they need to delay his debut a month or two in an attempt to maximize what he might be able to provide during the playoffs.”
It'll be intriguing to see how Chris Sale fares in his first season with Charlie Morton and the Atlanta Braves.
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