The Braves are exercising their club option on left-hander Chris Sale, according to a report from Jon Heyman of The New York Post. Sale will make $18MM in 2026.
The call to pick up Sale’s option for the 2026 campaign is surely one of the easiest option decisions any team will make this offseason. Sale, 36, is one of the best pitchers of his generation and won the NL Cy Young award in 2024. He was on track to compete for the away again this year, with a 2.52 ERA and 2.71 FIP through 15 starts, but he found himself sidelined for ten weeks over the summer due to a ribcage fracture. He looked just as dominant as ever when he returned, however, with a 2.72 ERA and 2.58 FIP across six starts in August and September. His stuff looked just as good as ever down the stretch, and he struck out an eye-popping 36.4% of his opponents in his 36 1/3 innings of work.
That Sale is pitching well is hardly a surprise, as he’s put together a Hall of Fame-caliber resume over the years. A nine-time All-Star who placed in the top five for AL Cy Young award voting six times before winning the NL award last year, Sale’s career 3.01 ERA, 2.88 FIP, and 30.8% strikeout rate know few equals throughout the game. He’s seventh all-time in strikeout rate among starting pitchers, and his run prevention and peripheral numbers match up well with titans of the sport like Clayton Kershaw and Pedro Martinez despite some of his counting numbers being held back by a relative lack of volume.
Fortunately, that relative lack of volume also means a relative lack of mileage on his arm, as compared to other players in his age range. Even with his 37th birthday on the horizon in March, Sale figures to serve as the club’s ace once again in 2026. He’ll be at the front of an Atlanta rotation with a lot of exciting upside but precious little certainty. Spencer Strider has shown the capacity to be a Cy Young caliber arm in the past, but had a disappointing 4.45 ERA in 2025. Spencer Schwellenbach has a career 3.23 ERA but was sidelined after just 17 starts this past season. Reynaldo Lopez had a 1.99 ERA in 2024 but didn’t appear in a game after March 28th this year.
Adding at least one proven, reliable rotation arm to this group figures to be a priority for the Braves this offseason, though it’s possible they could look to do more than that given the group’s collective injury history and questions about Lopez’s ability to handle the workload of a starter long-term. Even with additions likely on the horizon, though, there’s little doubt that Sale will be making his seventh career Opening Day start (and second for the Braves) in 2026 as long as he completes Spring Training with a clean bill of health.
As far as free agency is concerned, no Sale.
$18MM for Sale’s services for another season is a bargain, in my opinion.
Chris Sale is cheaper than Luis Robert Jr and apparently Luis Robert Jr’s club option was a no brainer for his team.
Come on, they could flip Luis Robert Jr at the deadline if he magically plays better than he has the past two years, when they were trying to flip him.
The same people who don’t think Robert is worth the money are the same people who would call an owner cheap.
@ThatsIT? yup
Sale is making about 16M less than DeGrom and he’ll make about 14-20 more starts, he’s a bargain. The rangers shouldn’t spend so foolishly
deGrom made 30 starts this year though. He’s actively not throwing as hard to preserve his health and it worked out pretty well
That was an easy yes. Pretty sure he’s going to bounce back and have another solid season. His injury was weird if I remember correctly.
Yeah he dove after a Juan Soto dribbler and broke his rib cage. It was a funky injury for sure he also threw to another batter after that and no one knew he had hurt himself until two days later when he was put on the DL.
Yeah. He broke his rib doing a full body dive for a ball and hit the ground hard on the field. Surprisingly, he still got the out and pitched another couple innings before he got pulled.
Another rib fracture? He had the same injury in 2022. Weird injury to repeat.
Sales tenure with the Sox was filled with weird injuries.
The broken finger, wrist injury, rib issue and maybe one more?
He will remain one flog my favorite players though, guy has that dog in him.
Cmac – The dude is too damn thin, that’s the problem. He’s got nothing protecting those ribs, all skin and bone.
Actually it happened in the 9th. He faced a couple more hitters before being pulled for his pitch count.
He didn’t want to be traded and luck happened he wasn’t.
Better than picking up $20mil options on Unkle Charlie. Run it back ATL!
I think that it was the right move picking up Morton’s option because we knew he could be a work horse at the five. Most teams would dream to have their fifth starter have a 4.19 ERA and throw 165 IP and be such a good leader in the clubhouse. Clubhouse Chemistry might be the most underrated thing in MLB because if the dodgers players all hated each others guts they wouldn’t have even made the playoffs
Braves 88 Man you NAILED IT!!! Gotta have chemistry and very underrated. I watched a team in 1989 with maybe 20% chance of winning the NL east that cub team had fantastic chemistry and the manager Don Zimmer knew what buttons to push and when to push … you could see the chemistry take over. Sprinkle a little bit of magic from baseball gods . It was such a fun year and yes we have seen several times since but that was when I was younger anyway happy to see Sale stay .
I would possibly go as far as offering another 2 year with an option deal to him at a realistic price. Given the Braves reluctance to spend on SP in free agency, I’d give it a shot. I know the probable lockout might affect signings, but heck, how many $20 mil contracts did they give Morton?!
They gave him that much b/c that’s what the market demanded for a SP on 2 short term deals. Note that there was no buyout at the end of the deals, providing more team value. It was mutually beneficial, while allowed Morton an open invitation, essentially.
In those 4 years in ATL, he averaged 171.5 IP/season to the tune of 111 ERA+. That was worth it.
No-brainer for the Braves. Certainly not surprising.
It’s the other roster decisions AA has to make that will determine how well they stack up next season.
Absolutely…. I really hope AA addresses the rotation this off season. Adding a top end SP or even 2 can send Lopez and Holmes going back to the pen addressing 2 problems at once. I have a sneaking suspicion they’re banking on Manoah as their 5th starter unfortunately (assuming he’s still with the organization).
I think they learned their lesson going into last year about not signing a top starter or even a #3 starting pitcher. Expect more pitching signings
Def 1 of the great comeback stories ever
But probly not a HOFer
Unless he can somehow win another CY
He is 32 in strikeouts all time he’ll get in.
They got him for Vaughn Grissom let that sink in. And people still talk trash about AA he had one bad season because ownership cut the purse string and went cheap to reset the luxury tax clock.
You can question his decisions at times but the one thing you can be sure of is AA will do the best he can to chase a Championship every chance he gets.
Braves do spend, not as much as the Dodgers, Yankees or Mets but one thing they have not been is cheap. Alex has done a pretty good job at fielding the best possible team with this current core of players.
braves also have waldrep, ritchie and other pitching prospects seemingly almost ready for big league rotation. the mysterious non-event element of schwellenbach’s injury concerns me. hoping he doesn’t become the new soroka for braves next few years. go braves!
I fully expect the Braves to sign Sale to an extension for 2027 at a a similar 18-20M price
It’s kinda funny how someone like Sale completely imploded on a bloated contract in a high profile city and, pun intended, sales through a more modest contract with aplomb in a lower profile city.
But such is baseball and quite a few players- the pressure and high profile and expectations of crazy deals in spotlight cities (no pun intended there) negatively impacts their game, then they go somewhere lower profile and they’re completely fine.
Eh, Sale had 2 great seasons in Boston (2017-18). Peripherals were still strong in 2019. Then he had multiple injuries, including Tommy John surgery.
Sale pitched very well in Boston before they gave him the extension. He is not psyched out about pitching in a large market. Wear and tear temporarily caught up after a run of excellence.
@Trillionaire
It is why NY is such a toss-up sometimes for players.
NY is a good example of players needing a particular mindset to succeed there. The greatest ability might be the skill needed to shut out the external noise.
Assuming TTO is referring to Bos/Atl, and looking just at regular season performance (since he has had no post-season action after ’21), Sale was just as good in Beantown and mostly excellent in both places.
He will look at W-L and say otherwise but that just reinforces the idiocy of focusing on that for starting pitchers, especially when you factor in team defense and the Green Monster for a lefty in Boston.
It is certainly true that pressure-to-perform varies from team to team and in varied circumstances, sometimes related to contract details, but to say that Sale completely imploded -aside from injury- in any context less than 4 years old is unwarranted.
Would love to see Atlanta to offer another 2 year extension. Sale can probably pitch another 4 years.