The Braves traded for Chris Sale with the postseason in mind. But what can bring Sale back to his old form with his new team?

The main thing, obviously, is his health. The Braves are banking on Sale being able to last into October. Last year, Sale made 20 starts in a season for the first time since 2019. But the left-hander hasn’t made 30 starts in a year, or qualified for the ERA title by innings pitched, since 2017, when he was at his peak.

Sale doesn’t need to be that 300-strikeout pitcher for the Braves. But if he can get his groove back over a full season with Atlanta, Sale will make this 2024 Braves rotation extremely formidable.

Here’s how he can do it.

First things first: Sale is already pitching better than you might think

Sale’s 4.30 ERA in 20 starts last season won’t blow you away, but you should take note of some of the numbers around that ERA. Especially his strikeout numbers.

Sale still struck out almost 30% of the batters he faced in 2023, and he averaged 11 K’s per nine innings. The difference between his strikeout rate (29.4%) and walk rate (6.8%) was top-10 in the Majors among pitchers who threw at least 100 innings. Those are all excellent numbers.

Sale’s K/9, for example, was actually right in line with his career mark, 11.1 … and he’s the all-time leader in that category. And if he maintained his 29.4% strikeout rate over a full season’s workload, he’d still be a 200-plus strikeout pitcher.

Sale faced 425 batters in 2023 and struck out 125 of them. If he faced the 700-800 batters that he would over a full, 30-start season, and posted the same K%, that’d put him in the 200-230 strikeout range for his season total. And that would be among the Major League leaders.

Statcast can also combine Sale’s strikeouts with his quality of contact allowed to generate an expected ERA. In 2023, Sale’s expected ERA was 3.61. That looks a lot better than 4.30, and actually put him right around the top quarter of Major League pitchers.

Among the 139 pitchers who faced at least 400 batters last season, Sale’s expected ERA ranked in the top 15, right between Tyler Glasnow and Logan Webb.

Sale continues to be very good at most of the things that go into being a very good pitcher:

• He generated a swing-and-miss rate close to 30%, ranking in the 75th percentile of MLB pitchers
• He induced a chase rate of over 33%, ranking in the 92nd percentile of MLB
• His hard-hit rate allowed, just under 35%, was in the 80th percentile of MLB
• The expected batting average against him was just .211, in the 85th percentile of MLB