Chris Sale isn't supposed to be doing this at 37. Guys with his mileage — a 2019 Tommy John surgery, a broken rib, a fractured wrist that basically wiped out 2023 and 2024 — are supposed to be hanging on for scraps of velocity, not adding it. Instead, Sale has spent 2026 looking like the guy who won the Cy Young in Boston, and on July 17 against the Rangers he punched his ticket into one of the sport's more exclusive rooms.
Sale struck out Rangers shortstop Ezequiel Duran in the fifth inning for career strikeout number 2,700, becoming just the 27th pitcher in MLB history to hit that number. He backed it up with 7 shutout innings on 2 hits as Atlanta thumped Texas 15-1, with Drake Baldwin, Matt Olson and Austin Riley all going deep to make the night a laugher. It's the second big strikeout marker of Sale's season — he'd already become the fastest pitcher ever to reach 2,500 punchouts back in May, blowing past a Randy Johnson record that stood for two decades.
Two of the strikeouts that padded Sale's total, both coming in the same inning.
What makes this run genuinely strange is the fastball. Pitchers in their late 30s coming off multiple arm surgeries do not typically start throwing harder. Sale's four-seamer has been sitting in the high-90s in recent starts, touching 99 mph — territory he hadn't lived in consistently since before the 2020 shutdown. It's the kind of velocity bump that shows up on Statcast leaderboards and makes hitters look silly, which is exactly what's been happening.
Sale, laughing, explains the sudden jump in velocity in his own words.
"I gotta let 'em know the old man's still got it" is a great soundbite, but Sale reportedly pointed to something more concrete behind the scenes too — extra rest between starts and, per Friedman's follow-up, a shoutout to a coach he calls "Miz" and the pitching staff room for pushing him to reach back for more. Whatever the mix of factors, the results have shown up everywhere from his Stuff+ grade to his prop markets, where oddsmakers have had to keep adjusting his strikeout lines upward as the season's gone along.
The 2,700th strikeout of Sale's career, punched out against the Rangers.
Atlanta locked Sale up through 2027 with a club option for 2028 back in February, a bet that the resurgence wasn't a fluke first half. Nights like this one against Texas make that deal look like a steal. The question now isn't whether Sale can still miss bats at 37 — he's already answered that — it's how high the strikeout total climbs before he's done, and whether this version of him is who shows up when the Braves need him most down the stretch.