The Atlanta Braves' showing against the Dodgers this week was nearly perfect in every way. It would have been nice to see the offense perform better, but when you sweep a key NL rival and lock up the tiebreaker, it is hard to be upset about the results. A huge reason why the Braves were able to pull off the sweep of one of the best teams in baseball was due to the heroics of Chris Sale on Thursday.
In short, Sale was tremendous. He threw his first complete-game shutout since 2019, and the Dodgers simply had no answer for him outside of a couple of decent hits off the bat of Mookie Betts. The morning after, most of the talk is about Sale's performance overall and how wild it is that he was able to do it at his age. However, there was one pitch in particular that was very special, and that will go down in history.
Sale has thrown 100 MPH in the past, but it had been a while. Before Thursday, the last time that Sale hit triple digits was 2018, and normally, pitchers don't exactly recover that kind of velocity as they get older. However, when Sale cranked a 100.1 MPH fastball to Shohei Ohtani in the third inning, he joined an elite (and eclectic) list of older pitchers that have performed the feat at age 37 or older.
There have only been 5 pitchers in the pitch tracking era (since 2008) 37 or older to hit 100 https://t.co/6dtbRTSwlO pic.twitter.com/467pcnttck
— Min Sub (Mitchell) (@MinSub4) August 28, 2026
Chris Sale became the sixth pitcher age 37 or older since 2008 to throw triple digits
First of all, this list is pretty hilarious. Aroldis Chapman was the most obvious guess here, but that the Braves have ANOTHER pitcher (Billy Wagner in his final season) as well as a pitcher they tried desperately to trade for (Jacob deGrom) on the list is pretty funny. It is also likely that you could give most people 100 guesses, and they wouldn't have come up with Daniel Bard or Luis Garcia.
More than that, what Sale's accomplishment shows is just how rare what he is doing at 37 years old actually is. We have seen pitchers perform well at advanced ages (deGrom, Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and Max Scherzer come to mind), but we usually see a very noticeable drop-off in the quality of their stuff, and they just outmaneuver hitters with what they have left. Not only is Sale mowing down opposing hitters, but it might also be true that his stuff has never been better.
We already knew the Braves' trade for Sale will go down as one of the greatest steals in franchise history. That became true the moment Sale won his first Cy Young. What we didn't know is that the best may be yet to come, and while a second Cy Young MIGHT be out of reach in 2026, Sale is showing no signs of slowing down.
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