Scouting report: Chris Sale’s electric career, and his potentially troubling recent numbers

Chicago White Sox starting pitcher Chris Sale, left, celebrates with catcher Omar Narvaez. AP

December 8, 2016

4 minutes to read

COMMENTARY

The rumors around Chris Sale and the Red Sox have been around forever. For years, the sides matched up as the best fits as trade partners. When the White Sox needed to tear things and rebuild a team from the ground up, the Red Sox had a farm system deep with top prospects and some of the best young talent in baseball. At a certain point, it felt like waiting for Ross and Rachel to end up together, and Boston fans were impatient for the seemingly inevitable to happen.

The Red Sox now have their man, a bonafide ace to go alongside David Price (which starts the wonderful sports radio debate of WHO STARTS OPENING DAY!?!?!) and reigning Cy Young award winner Rick Porcello. For a few years now, Sale has been hyped as one of the best pitchers in baseball, and rightfully so. His 2014 season, where he posted a 2.17 ERA with a 0.966 WHIP and a 6.6 WAR, certainly jumps off the page. Sale’s last few seasons have been excellent as well, where he’s posted WARs of 3.3 and 4.9 with ERAs of 3.41 and 3.34 while finishing fourth and fifth in the Cy Young voting.

Red Sox president Dave Dombrowski clearly wants to put this team in the best position to win right now. For Dombrowski, there’s no more important time than the present. It’s the mentality that led to the Miguel Cabrera trade, when he dealt Andrew Miller and Cameron Maybin, then Top-15 prospects in all of baseball. It’s what led him to trade Manuel Margot for Craig Kimbrel. It’s what led him to trade Anderson Espinoza for Drew Pomeranz before the trade deadline.

While Sale hasn’t matched his 2014 totals in the past two seasons, he doesn’t need to be that in order to give the Red Sox way more than the team paid for (in both prospects and salary). Since 2012, only three pitchers have posted more fWAR than Sale: Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Price. And while past performance is not always indicative of future production, Sale comes with a resume that’s decorated as anyone in baseball. According to Baseball Reference, three of the four pitchers with the highest similarity scores to Sale through their age 27 seasons are Cole Hamels, Johan Santana and Price, which is pretty good company.

But in the present, there are some numbers with Sale that raise some eyebrows. Last season, Sale struck out 9.3 batters per nine innings, his lowest rate since 2012 and a drop from the 11.8 batter per nine innings from 2015. This similarly coincided with a drop in average fastball velocity from 95.64 MPH in 2015 to 93.64 MPH in 2016. Given Sale’s wonky delivery, rail-thin frame and the report from Peter Gammons that the White Sox were concerned about the 27-year-old southpaw’s injury risk, the loss of fastball velocity should raise some concern.

Injury risk certainly plays a major role in the value of this trade, but Sale should provide a lot of return. The five-time All-Star has one year left on a five-year, $32.5 million deal that comes with two team options at $12.5 million and $13.5 million. Given that a pitcher of Sale’s caliber would likely receive a multi-year $35-$40 million deal on the open market, this team-friendly contract provides terrific value for the Red Sox.

Of all the prospects in the deal, Yoan Moncada represents the biggest loss. The Cuban behemoth of an athlete is the consensus best prospect in baseball and has ridiculous set of raw tools. While Moncada struggled in his brief stint in the majors last season, his rate of improvement throughout his quick rise suggests he’ll continue to adjust. With Michael Kopech, Dombrowski is dealing a pitching prospect whose stock has never been higher, with the ceiling of a top-level starter and floor of a high-leverage reliever. The biggest strikes against Moncada and Kopech is that they simply weren’t ready to contribute in the major leagues right now, and, for Dombrowski, that’s what made them expendable.

Dombrowski did not touch the youth that’s already contributing at the major league level. According to a report from Buster Olney, the White Sox asked for Betts and Benintendi at the trade deadline. So while it appears the asking price for Sale went down, Dombrowski also did not give away any young player who was ready to contribute to a potential Red Sox World Series run in 2016. The Red Sox maintained their young core of Betts, Bogaerts, Benintendi and Bradley while acquiring Sale in the process, and that can only be marked as a victory.

But in the last 13 months, Dombrowski has traded Margot, Espinoza, Moncada and Kopech to build for the present. And while you certainly have to give up something good to get something good in return, you don’t have to look very far to see that building a team up for the present while maintaining the future is possible. Theo Epstein’s World Series-winning Chicago Cubs developed several young stars in Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Addison Russell (with more on the way in Ian Happ and Eloy Jimenez) while building for the present, signing Jon Lester and trading for Aroldis Chapman.

Especially with the resources of a big-market team like Boston, balancing both the present and the future is feasible. I’m ecstatic to see Chris Sale pitch in a Red Sox uniform. He’s an established ace whose track record of success speaks for itself. But the deal for Sale starts to look shakier when looked outside a vacuum, when considering that the aggregation of moves over the last 13 months has depleted the farm system.

Dombrowski is putting all of his eggs in one basket. He wants to win right now and worry about the future in, well, the future. Sale’s track record certainly suggests that the Red Sox are acquiring one of the best pitchers in baseball, but so did Price’s resume last offseason. And with their newly acquired lefty, it’s hard to ignore the decrease in both strikeout rate and velocity on top of the injury risks Chicago reportedly had. If both him and Price end up underperforming, it’ll be two big strikes against Dombrowski.