Braves' Chris Sale Reaches Impressive Career Milestone vs. Phillies

The Atlanta Braves are trying to salvage a disappointing series versus the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday night. They are on their way to doing that thanks to Chris Sale.

The 2024 Cy Young winner tossed six shutout innings, giving up just two hits and three walks. The left-hander also struck out eight batters.

With his eighth punchout to end the sixth, Sale reached 2,500 career strikeouts.

2,500 career strikeouts for Sale 🔥#BravesCountry pic.twitter.com/ukBosBvCpx
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) May 30, 2025

Sale is the 38th pitcher in the modern era to reach the milestone. In his last start, Sale passed Jon Lester for 40th on the all-time strikeouts list.

Sale has a chance to really climb up the all-time strikeouts this summer. With 100 more punchouts, which Sale should get this season with relative ease as long as he's healthy, he will pass 10 more pitchers on the all-time strikeouts list.

Braves Hall of Fame left-hander Tom Glavine is seemingly within reach too. Glavine sits at 29th all-time on the strikeouts list with 2,607.

Fellow Braves Hall of Fame starter Warren Spahn is just behind Glavine at No. 30 on the list with 2,583 strikeouts.

Sale, though, needed just 2,026 innings to get to 2,500 strikeouts. Glavine pitched 4,413.1 innings while Spahn tossed 5,243.2 frames.

No pitcher in history has reached 2,500 strikeouts in fewer innings than Sale.

Remarkable: @Braves ace Chris Sale is the fastest to 2,500 strikeouts (by innings pitched) of any pitcher in @MLB history.

Thanks to Elijah Ackerman of @MLBNetwork Research for a great note.
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) May 30, 2025

When Sale exited in the middle of the seventh, the Braves led the Phillies 8-0. Barring an historic collapse, the Thursday night win will bring Atlanta back to three games under .500 at 26-29.

The Braves will return home to face Sale's former team, the Boston Red Sox, this weekend. Unfortunately, Sale won't get a chance to face the team that traded him to Atlanta.

He appeared to enjoy facing the Red Sox two weeks ago. On May 16, Sale gave up just one run and struck out eight batters in seven innings at Fenway Park.

Sale registered 945 of his career strikeouts in six seasons with Boston. During seven years with the Chicago White Sox, he had 1,244 strikeouts.

Entering Thursday, Sale was 20-6 with a 2.63 ERA, 1.082 WHIP and 303 strikeouts in 239.1 innings since the start of the 2024 season with the Braves.