Chris Sale signs 1-year, $27M extension to stay with Braves

Chris Sale and the Atlanta Braves are in agreement on a one-year, $27 million contract extension that includes a club option, keeping the future Hall of Fame pitcher from reaching free agency next winter.

Sale, who turns 37 on March 30, resurrected his career with the Braves after five injury-pocked seasons, winning the National League Cy Young Award in 2024 followed by a strong 2025.

The deal, announced Tuesday by the Braves, tacks on a year to his current contract and has a $30 million option with no buyout for the 2028 season.

It represents the largest single-season salary the Braves have guaranteed a player.

The Braves locked up Sale in the wake of injuries this spring to young starters Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep — injuries that will test their depth as they look to bounce back from a disappointing 76-86 season in 2025.

Sale was one of the few bright spots for the Braves, though a rib injury limited him to 125⅔ innings, in which he posted a 2.58 ERA and struck out 165 while walking just 32.

Entering his 17th big league season, Sale has been one of the most dominant pitchers of his generation, with a career ERA of 3.01 over 2,084 innings with 2,579 strikeouts and 487 walks. With a fastball that still sits at 95 mph and runs up to 99 complementing one of the game’s most devastating sliders, Sale has carried power stuff deep into his career and remains a 6-foot-6, 180-pound enigma for hitters.

The deal is the second extension Sale has signed with Atlanta, the first coming after the Dec. 30, 2023 trade from the Boston Red Sox. Sale had gone to Boston in a ballyhooed trade with the Chicago White Sox in December 2016 and was brilliant in his first two years with the Red Sox, striking out 308 in his Boston debut season and following a year later by closing out a World Series victory.

Injuries caught up with Sale soon thereafter. He struggled in 2019, underwent Tommy John surgery at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and missed the 2020 season, returned to start nine games in 2021 and missed all but two starts in 2022 after fracturing his rib cage, breaking a pinky on a line drive and breaking his right wrist in a bicycle accident.

While he started 20 games in 2023, Sale’s proneness to allowing home runs left him looking like a lesser version of the dominator who in his first seven seasons as a full-time starter went 99-59 with a 2.91 ERA in 1,388 innings.

In Atlanta, finally healthy, Sale rediscovered the best version of himself. After finishing in the top six of Cy Young voting in each of those seven seasons, he finally won the award for the first time after going 18-3 with a 2.38 ERA and an NL-leading 225 strikeouts in 177⅔ innings.

The Braves were immediately rewarded for the two-year, $38 million deal they gave him that covered the 2024 and 2025 seasons — and included a $16 million club option they exercised for this year.

The new extension takes one of the best players off the market that is likely to be affected by a lockout and will keep Sale from reaching free agency for the first time in his career. He now has signed four extensions: one each with the White Sox and Red Sox and a pair with Atlanta.