Misiorowski Needs Almost Nothing to Pass Sale in FIP
Chris Sale leads Jacob Misiorowski by just 0.027 FIP points — a gap three strikeouts wide. The harder problem is that Misiorowski's ERA lead rests on a .217 BABIP that his own two-year baseline says won't last.
Published: · Figures as of August 28, 2026
Asked: what would need to happen for Misiorowski to pass Sale?
Misiorowski's FIP deficit to Sale is about three strikeouts wide
Running the season's own scaling constant through the FIP formula (rather than the generic 3.10) puts Chris Sale's FIP at 2.076 and Jacob Misiorowski's at 2.103 - a gap of only 0.027 runs. That's thin enough that a single strong start could flip it. The bigger question is whether Misiorowski's much larger ERA lead (1.73 to 2.06) can hold once some batted-ball luck he's currently getting evens out.
How small the FIP gap actually is
FIP only cares about strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches and home runs, scaled to innings. Holding Misiorowski's 151 innings fixed, here's what moves his FIP by enough to close the 0.027-run gap on its own:
| Change (rest of season, IP held at 151) | Effect on FIP |
|---|---|
| 1 fewer home run allowed (13 → 12) | -0.086 runs |
| 2 fewer walks (35 → 33) | -0.040 runs |
| 3 more strikeouts (222 → 225) | -0.040 runs |
Any one of those alone already overtakes the current gap. Given he's striking out 13.2 per nine and has a K/BB near 6.3, that's a routine outcome over his next couple of starts, not a reach - the standing gap is really just noise between two elite peripheral profiles.
Why the bigger gap (ERA) is less secure than it looks
The gap that actually separates them right now is on ERA, not FIP, and ERA-minus-FIP is where that shows up:
- Misiorowski: ERA 1.73 vs FIP 2.10, a -0.37 gap - his results are running well ahead of what his strikeout/walk/homer core supports.
- Sale: ERA 2.06 vs FIP 2.08, a -0.02 gap - his results and his process agree almost exactly.
DataBaller's sustainability read (v2, as of August 28) backs this up on the batted-ball side. Over his last 83 balls in play (July 20 - Aug 27), Misiorowski's batting-average-on-balls-in-play-against is .217, versus his own established two-year level of .254 - 1.36 standard deviations below where his process usually sits, worth roughly 3 hits of results the model doesn't expect to hold. That scores 0.32 with "down" (i.e., regression-upward) direction, at a moderate 0.52 confidence given the modest sample. Sale's own window BABIP-against (.291) sits close to his .302 baseline - a mild -0.4 SD, scored 0.80 and flagged stable at 0.69 confidence.
So, what would actually need to happen
- On FIP, almost nothing extra - his existing strikeout/walk/homer rates are already close enough that a few more punchouts, one less home run, or a couple fewer walks over his next starts erases Sale's small lead there.
- On the results that currently separate them, his hit prevention on balls in play needs to hold near its recent .217 level rather than drift back toward his .254 norm. If it reverts as the model expects, his ERA moves up toward his own 2.10 FIP - which would compress, not grow, his edge over Sale, and could put Sale ahead outright if Sale's stable process holds.
None of this touches things the data here can't see - contact quality, defense behind each pitcher, or matchups still to come - so treat the sustainability read as a directional flag on the probability, not a certainty. Confidence: Medium, resting on a real but modest 83-ball-in-play sample for Misiorowski and a FIP scaling constant that carries a few hundredths of its own error.