Written by Ben Reiter at SI.com
When it is said that something is priceless, it doesn’t really mean that there exists no sum at which it can be bought. It means that the asset is so rare that it is virtually incomparable, so while one can imagine its price to be extraordinarily high there is no real way of precisely determining how exorbitant it might turn out to be.
Such was the case with Chris Sale—before Tuesday, anyway. The 27-year-old lefthander, a perennial AL Cy Young candidate for the White Sox, seemed a priceless commodity for four main reasons. The first was the five-year extension he signed with Chicago in 2013 that will pay him a total of $38.5 million over the next three years; based on current WAR exchange rates of approximately $8 million per win above replacement, he’s making about one-third of what he is worth.
The second was the sorry state of a free agent market in which there was no starting pitcher approaching Sale’s quality. The market is so weak that its top option was a soon-to-be 37-year-old, Rich Hill, who is a decade removed from the last time he exceeded 110 innings in a season. On Monday the Dodgers signed Hill to a three-year deal that will pay him an average of $16 million a season—significantly more than will be earned over that period by Sale, a five-time All-Star who has averaged 203 innings pitched over the past five years and, by the way, is nine years younger.
The third reason reason is how incomparable Sale is, both in style and performance. He is a lanky lefty who uses his 6’6” height, upper-90s heat, cyclonic windup and sidearm delivery to fool hitters who have no way of preparing to face someone like him, because there is no one else like him. Of pitchers who appeared in each of the past five seasons, only Clayton Kershaw, Johnny Cueto, Zack Greinke and Madison Bumgarner had cumulative ERAs better than Sale’s 3.04—which he achieved while pitching in a bandbox of a park on the South Side of Chicago and in front of some dreadful defenses. Only Max Scherzer and Kershaw whiffed more than the 1,133 batters Sale did.
To continue reading this article, click here.
