In First NL Season, Chris Sale Seeks First Cy + Rare Triple Crown

By Dan Schlossberg

When the Atlanta Braves traded top prospect Vaughn Grissom to the Boston Red Sox for fading pitcher Chris Sale last winter, the deal elicited yawns from all corners of the baseball world.

Grissom, 23, was supposed to fill Boston’s second-base hole, which has existed ever since Dustin Pedroia had good health and the ability to play.

Sale, 34, was considered a washed-up veteran whose best days (including three straight starts in the All-Star Game) were behind him.

Instead, Grissom got hurt early and often, hardly played, and was the biggest flop in Fenway this season.

An All-Star in his first NL season, Chris Sale could also take home his first Cy Young trophy plus the rare Triple Crown of pitching.Photo byDan Schlossberg

Sale, by contrast, not only pitched himself to the top of the Atlanta rotation after Spencer Strider’s elbow blew up in April but made the NL All-Star team.

Now he’s the top candidate for his first Cy Young Award and the rare Triple Crown of pitching — symbolic of leadership in wins, strikeouts, and earned run average.

Only 28 previous pitchers, including 23 since the 1901 advent of the American League, have won it, with the latest being Shane Bieber of Cleveland during the virus-shortened 2020 campaign.

A bunch of Hall of Famers, notably Sandy Koufax, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander, in three different seasons, have won it multiple times.

That short list also includes two-time winners Christy Mathewson, Lefty Grove, Lefty Gomez, and Roger Clemens.

Active winners of past Triple Crowns are Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw in addition to Bieber.

How hard is it to win the pitching Triple Crown? Suffice to say that none of the vaunted trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz ever did it. Neither did another Braves Hall of Famer, Warren Spahn.

Cy Young, who won a record 511 games and had a pitching award named after him, did win a Triple Crown — with 33 wins, a 1.62 ERA, and 158 strikeouts during the Dead Ball Era in 1901.

The dead ball obviously made a difference; 15 instances of Pitching Triple Crowns happened before Babe Ruth’s bat changed the face of the game in 1920.

In recent history, the feat has been as rare as a White Sox victory.

Steve Carlton was the only pitcher to turn the trick in the ‘70s, while Doc Gooden was the only Triple Crown winners of the ‘80s. In fact, Koufax was the only pitcher to pull it off, albeit three times, between Hal Newhouser in 1945 and Carlton in 1972.

And now along comes Sale, virtually certain to join Bieber along with Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw (both in 2011) as the only pitchers to win the triple in the 21st century.

It’s quite a feat.

Forbes baseball writer Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is the author of Home Run King: the Remarkable Record of Hank Aaron and 40 other baseball books. His email is ballauthor@gmail.com.