When the Braves acquired Chris Sale in a surprising trade, he was approaching the final year of his contract and had a club option for 2025.
The Braves removed the question mark for 2025. They signed the left-handed Sale, the newest member of their starting rotation, to a two-year, $38 million contract, the team announced Thursday. The deal includes an $18 million club option for 2026.
Sale, who will be 35 this season, will make $16 million in 2024 and $22 million in 2025. He agreed to donate 1% of his salary to the Atlanta Braves Foundation.
“That’s great. I definitely appreciate that,” Sale said Thursday over Zoom about signing the two-year deal with Atlanta. “They put their faith and trust in me, and that obviously makes me feel confident going forward and gives me a boost – not only going through spring training, but going through the year. It also allows me to feel a little bit more comfortable, right? I’m going to be here for a couple years, so I can kind of get settled in and not really bounce around.”
The Braves on Saturday acquired the left-handed Sale from the Red Sox for Vaughn Grissom. In the trade, Boston also sent $17 million to the Braves.
By doing a new deal, the Braves added a year of team control. Barring anything else, he’ll be part of their 2025 rotation, which could be important considering Max Fried and Charlie Morton might not be pitching for the Braves next year.
This contract works for both sides. The Braves get the extra year of control, and Sale receives more guaranteed money.
Sale’s contract is a new deal that wipes out the terms of his pact with Boston. Still, the Braves have the money from the Red Sox to help them pay down Sale’s salaries.
Sale, who is represented by Wasserman, gets a two-year deal with guaranteed money upfront – no deferrals, as there were in the five-year extension he signed with Boston in 2019.
Before the Braves signed Sale to this deal, he was scheduled to make $27.5 million in 2024, with $10 million set to be deferred to a later date. He had a $20 million option for 2025, but $5 million of that was deferred money.
Sale’s agency calculated the present-day dollars of his original 2024 salary as being between $20 million and $22 million. By signing this contract, Sale gets $38 million guaranteed instead of the $27.5 million with deferrals.
In this way, Sale’s deal covers the original $20 million option for 2025. It also knocks out the deferrals so that he is paid the money during this year and next.
The Braves took on some risk by acquiring Sale, whose injuries limited him to 11 starts from 2020-22. In 2023, he logged 20 starts and provided some encouraging results. He had a 4.30 ERA and 125 strikeouts over 102⅔ innings. And in September, he allowed only eight runs in 25 innings.
At one time, Sale was one of the sport’s elite pitchers. The Braves like Sale’s ability when he’s healthy. Of course, his injury history still might be concerning. In 2020, he underwent Tommy John surgery, which also shortened his 2021 season. In 2022, he had a stress fracture in his right rib cage. In 2023, Sale suffered a stress reaction in his left shoulder blade.
But around the injuries, he’s been a tremendous starter with strikeout stuff. He features a four-seam fastball, a slider and a change-up. In 2023, Sale’s stuff crept back toward his track record, a positive sign. He’s no longer in his prime, but perhaps he’s still a top-half-of-the-rotation guy.
When the Braves traded for him, they were making a bet. They strengthened it by guaranteeing Sale another year.
The average annual value of Sale’s contract is $19 million. According to FanGraphs, the Braves’ 2024 cash payroll, at this moment, is expected to be $228 million. Their luxury-tax figure, which is based on the average annual values of the contracts on the 40-man roster, is around $271 million, which is well above the $237 million threshold for 2024.
If the Braves’ luxury-tax payroll hits $277 million, the Braves would have their highest selection in the 2025 MLB Draft moved back 10 places.
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