Seemingly in good position to finally win the American League Cy Young Award, Red Sox ace Chris Sale was placed on the disabled list again Saturday with mild left shoulder inflammation.
The Red Sox hope it's a minor setback for Sale, who came off the DL with a dominant five-inning win Sunday and was scheduled to start Sunday against the Rays at Fenway Park. He's having his greatest season to date, going 12-4 with a league-leading 1.97 ERA, an 0.85 WHIP and 13.5 strikeouts per nine innings while becoming the seventh pitcher in AL history with 200 or more strikeouts in six consecutive seasons.
With the Indians' Trevor Bauer on the DL and out four to six weeks with a stress fracture in his right fibula, Sale was the odds-on favorite to cop his first Cy. His closest competitor is Corey Kluber, who swooped in late last season to beat out Sale after the former White Sox star tired down the stretch.
Sale has a monthly ERA of 2.82 or lower for April, May, June and July. But the number rises to 3.16 in August and 3.78 in September, suggesting the workload wears on him as the season goes on.
Last year, Sale's first in Boston, he posted a 4.38 ERA in August and 3.72 in September.
The solution would seem to be to take a break, catch his breath and hit the refresh button. Perhaps that's what it will take for Sale to get through an entire season of dominance. He's 6-0 with an 0.20 ERA over his last seven starts, which is one of the best stretches for any starter in decades.
The last pitcher to better that in a seven-start span was the Cardinals' Bob Gibson (0.14 ERA in 1968). Gibson finished with a 1.12 ERA and won the National League Cy Young Award in what's known as the Year of the Pitcher.
Meanwhile, the NL Cy Young debate could test voters' knowledge of analytics. Jacob de Grom has a 1.81 ERA but is only 7-7 for the Mets, yet he has the same WAR (6.3) as probable favorite Max Scherzer of the Nationals. Scherzer is 16-5 with a 2.11 ERA, and has a better WHIP (0.89) than de Grom (0.97). Fivethirtyeight.com pointed out de Grom's ERA would be the second-lowest in history for a qualified pitcher with a non-winning record. Tim O'Keefe went 6-6 with an 0.86 ERA for the 1880 Troy Trojans.
Wins have been devalued for several years in the analytics world and aren't a factor in some voters' minds. Remember the Mariners' Felix Hernandez won in 2010 despite a 13-12 record, so de Grom will get some support in spite of his record. The award goes to the "most outstanding" pitcher, not the winningest, and unlike the MVP award, it usually doesn't matter if your team made the postseason.
Either way it should spark another interesting debate between the old-school dinosaurs and the analytically inclined among the Baseball Writers' Association of America voters.
