It’s been another slow start to the season for the 2024 NL Cy Young Award winner and he’s clearly more aware of it than anybody else.

When you buy tickets to a game that has the likes of Chris Sale taking on Zack Wheeler, you’d think that runs would be at a premium. Instead, the sport of baseball threw us another curveball as both Sale and Wheeler ended up struggling in a slugfest that the Atlanta Braves ended up winning 7-5. Chris Sale himself was critical of his own performance but still seemed pretty confident that he’ll be able to turn things around and return to good form eventually.

“Winning fixes everything, really,” said Sale when asked about how the game went despite his rough start. “To come in against a team like this and be able to win the game the way we did…[Sean Murphy] with a big swing early in the game but then I let the wind out of our sails (no pun intended). Then we just kept scrapping.” Sale was endlessly effusive when it came to talking about his teammates and that included the bullpen as well. “Our bullpen threw more innings than I did and flatlined them. That’s just big. This game was about a lot of things that we did right.”

“They were going up against one of the best, too. Wheeler’s about as good as you can get out there. Especially since I put [my team] in a hole early but they come back and then I put ‘em right back into a hole. They just kept fighting. They never game up and they never cashed it in. I can’t say enough about our bullpen coming in and doing what they did. That’s the reason why we won this game.

Sale continued to talk about how Sean Murphy in particular made a fantastic return to the squad after suffering a broken rib that kept him out of the early infancy of the season. “Unbelievable,” said Sale when he was asked to talk about Murphy’s performance on the night. “[He hit a] big three-run home run, [he had] another big hit later in the game. It seemed like the game just gravitated towards him today. Having a guy like that come back around is key for us.” Sale continued to heap praise upon Murphy by stating that “he was a big part of our success last year. He’s a Gold Glove-caliber, All-Star catcher. Anybody would take a guy like that coming back on their team for sure.”

While Sale was clearly thrilled about the win and the performance of his teammates, he was definitely critical of his own performance on the night and to start the season so far. “I’ve just got to find a groove. It’s not clicked yet. It’s not all put together, which is frustrating because I kind of felt I was there in spring training,” stated Sale when asked about his first three starts of the season. “Once the season started it just got off the rails a little bit. But hey, if this was easy, everyone would do it — it’s part of the game. It’s frustrating, obviously. We won this game but I know I’ll probably be staring at a ceiling until three in the morning. I got some days to figure it out and we’ve got time.”

When he was asked about which facet of his game that he needed to improve upon at the moment, he had a simple answer for that. “Consistency,” said last year’s NL Cy Young Award winer. “Being able to throw my pitches for strikes and location. My slider was decent but I think command and consistency is going to help me out with that.” The good news is that this is actually not far off from how he started in 2024. Over his first three starts last season, Sale threw 17.2 innings and struck out 20 batters while walking five and giving up 15 hits and nine runs for an ERA of 4.58 and a FIP of 3.39. Here in 2025, he’s at 14.2 innings pitched with 17 strikeouts, one walk, 19 hits and 11 runs allowed, giving him an ERA of 9.64 and a FIP of 3.71.

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

So while his ERA is definitely bloated at the moment, it’s pretty clear that he’s not too far away from finding that groove that he talked about. For now, we’ll just have to hope that he’ll get into that groove sooner rather than later and also that his teammates continue to lift him up while he figures things out. He’ll surely pay them back in the long run.