Boston Red Sox: Chris Sale in a race with Corey Kluber for Cy Young Award
Chris Sale has been dominant all season for the Boston Red Sox, but he hasn’t quite locked up the AL Cy Young Award thanks to the Indians’ Corey Kluber.
If the season ended today, I believe Boston Red Sox pitcher Chris Sale would take home the American League Cy Young Award. As of Wednesday, he leads all the AL in strikeouts, ERA, WHIP, and wins.
Unfortunately for Sale, Corey Kluber of the Cleveland Indians is right on his tail. He’s second in ERA, third in strikeouts, second in WHIP, and seventh in wins.
Chris Sale clearly has the edge over Corey Kluber, but he’ll still have to finish strong to maintain that edge. Sale has an ERA of 2.57 while Kluber’s is just 2.65. One bad game from Sale and he could give the ERA lead away. Luckily, it looks like Sale will undoubtedly keep his strikeout lead in the American League. He has 229, while Chris Archer of the Tampa Bay Rays has 189, and Kluber has 183. If he maintains his 12.77 K’s per nine innings pitched, Sale should end the season with an absurd number of strikeouts.
Right now, Sale is slated to pitch in 10 more regular season games for the Red Sox in 2017. He is averaging 7 innings in each outing, so realistically we should see 70 more innings of Chris Sale baseball. With that, Sale should end the season with over 300 strikeouts, and he may end up somewhere around 330. That number could grow even higher if he pitches as well as he did last night against the Rays. Sale went 8 innings and struck out 13 batters while allowing just 2 hits.
13 Ks in 13 seconds, a beautiful thing. pic.twitter.com/XvJqOt6w3J
— Red Sox (@RedSox) August 9, 2017
Kluber also had a dominant outing on Tuesday night, as he allowed just 3 hits and struck out 11 batters against the Colorado Rockies.
There’s tons of baseball left to be played for both the Red Sox and the Indians, and both teams are making strong runs towards the postseason. These teams could actually wind up facing off in October, and a Sale-Kluber matchup would be can’t miss TV.
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While a Cy Young would be fun for Chris Sale, I’m sure he’d much rather win a World Series in 2017. Right now, it seems like he has a chance at both.