Undefeated Sale hails Arrieta as 'best pitcher in baseball'

With yet another masterful, complete-game effort Thursday against the Houston Astros, Chris Sale improved to a ridiculous 9-0 in 2016, lowering his ERA to 1.58 through 68 1/3 innings while becoming the first Chicago White Sox pitcher in the live-ball era to win his first nine starts in a season.

Still, though, even as the evidence continues to mount, Sale doesn't consider himself the best starter in the game. Actually, Sale said, baseball's most dominant hurler plies his trade on the north side of Chicago - not at the south side's U.S. Cellular Field.

It's Jake Arrieta.

"He is the best pitcher in baseball right now," Sale told Bruce Levine of the 670 The Score after lifting the White Sox past Houston, 2-1, with his second complete game in as many starts.

Gracious deference aside, though, both Sale and Arrieta have fair claims to the title of baseball's best pitcher not named Clayton Kershaw (who is absolutely on another level right now). Arrieta, set to make his ninth start of the season Friday, boasts a lower ERA than Sale this year even after adjusting for his league's tepid run-scoring environment, but the lanky left-hander trumps the reigning NL Cy Young award winner in almost every other meaningful metric.

Expanding the data range doesn't yield a definitive answer, either, as both pitchers have been positively bananas since the start of 2014 - Arrieta's first full season with the Cubs.

2014-2016

So how do we settle this? Well, the two Chicago clubs are set to square off later this summer - twice on the south side, then twice more at Wrigley - in July's highly anticipated City Series, and the fans aren't the only ones hoping for a Sale-Arrieta matchup.

"Of course," Arrieta told Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune of a potential matchup with Sale. "I think that would be an exciting game, a low-scoring game, and the winner would be determined by who makes the (fewest) mistakes. A team like that is playing really well and with what we're doing, it would be a dogfight.

"But that's what you want to be a part of, games like that when you have to be on your best that night to beat an opponent like that."

And if the two were to face one another after July? Well, that would be fun, too.

"None of those other rivalries are like this. This would be a true civil war," Brooks Boyer, the White Sox's senior VP of sales and marketing, said earlier this month of a potential World Series showdown with the Cubs. "It would really separate the city. It would be awesome."