Chris Sale

On the record · career milestones this season

2,700 career strikeouts — Fri, Jul 17 · night game vs. Texas Rangers The scorecard → · The write-up →

150 career wins — Sun, Apr 26 · day game vs. Philadelphia Phillies The scorecard →

2,600 career strikeouts — Sun, Apr 12 · night game vs. Cleveland Guardians The scorecard →

The card rack

FlagshipChris Sale [Gold] #427 · 2026 Topps Series 2 · 128 recent sales 7N ▼0.1%

$2.49Raw$13.96PSA 9$41.58PSA 10$54.00BGS 10PSA 10 · 46 nights

Live on eBay now · asking, not sold · as of 2026-08-28 · paid links

$0.99Ungraded$1.00Ungraded$1.85Ungraded

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The rookieChris Sale #65 · 2011 Topps · 589 recent sales 7N ▲1.1%

$3.00Raw$23.00PSA 9$88.59PSA 10$115BGS 10PSA 10 · 43 nights

Live on eBay now · asking, not sold · as of 2026-08-28 · paid links

$2.99Ungraded$3.50Ungraded$4.00Ungraded

See all on eBay →

Paid link — as an eBay Partner, FVR earns from qualifying purchases. · Flagship = his most-traded card (the market’s reference); the rookie = the top card of his first card year. As of August 28, 2026 · trend is FVR's own nightly archive · prices via SportsCardsPro · what these terms mean

Scout’s note

Sale came out of Lakeland, Florida, as a first-rounder in 2010, and at 37 he is posting a 2.20 ERA for Atlanta — third in the league — with 166 strikeouts over 135 innings and a 4.9 WAR. The Index holds him ungraded by design: the stuff model is stability-tested but not outcome-validated, so no arm earns a board flag, even one of the great late-career seasons. The ERA-FIP luck gap cleared the bar for a hand-filed regression call. At 37, the player still matters.

Current signals

The read: Sale is in the Index ungraded, on purpose: our stuff model is stability-tested but not outcome-validated, so no big-league arm gets a board flag from it — not even one of the best seasons in the sport. (Calls are another matter: the ERA-FIP luck gap did clear the bar, and we file arm regression calls by hand from it.) The page is here because the player matters; the board grade waits for the science.

WAR (season · MLB calc)

5.4

A market fact, not an engine read: what a club decided about him, on the season before this one. Figures from Cot’s, as of August 22, 2026.

2026 salary

$18.00M

Tax hit

$18.00M

Service time

15 yr 61 d

Guaranteed

$38M

Cash and the tax hit are two different rulebooks and are never subtracted from one another — see the payroll board for his club, Atlanta Braves.

A second set of books

The same contract, read by MLB Spreadsheets (Ethan Hullihen), as of August 20, 2026. We keep two sources on this because one source cannot check itself.

Tax AAV

$18.0M

Guaranteed

$38.0M

Term

2 yrs

His class

Extension

The tax AAV above is his number under the CBA’s own rulebook, not the average we work out from Cot’s total. On a contract with deferred money the two come apart on purpose — and neither is subtracted from the other.

Collect Chris Sale

If the signal is right, the cardboard usually finds out later. Current listings:

High-end listings ($75+) →

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Not financial advice. We take positions only after publication — never before. Misses stay on the record.

The Bureau on Chris Sale

The scouting press, in their own words