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Here's how Sox ace Sale piles up the strikeouts

Chris Sale has been striking out opposing hitters at a dizzying pace this season.

The Chicago White Sox' No. 1 starter is just the fourth pitcher in major-league history to strike out 10 or more in seven straight starts, and he is in some great company with Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan, Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson, the towering left-hander to whom he is often compared.

Over the seven-start stretch, Sale has pitched 52 innings and struck out 85. The 26-year-old Floridian is on pace for 294 strikeouts, which would be a franchise record and the most in baseball since 2002.

Impressive, without a doubt. But how is Sale blowing away so many opposing hitters with such apparent ease?

A very good big-league starter can get hitters out with two plus pitches.

Sale has three - the fastball, slider and changeup - and he is able to alter the first two pitches.

That means hitters stepping in to face the Sox' ace are at an immediate disadvantage.

"I think more people might be looking slider or changeup," manager Robin Ventura said. "When a guy is dominant with something else, your fastball can just jump on guys a little bit more. (Sale) does throw hard. He's normally in the 93-94 (mph) range, but he can get it up there. He can get it up around 97-98 and he can reach back and get a little extra, so there are times when he can add velocity, which a lot of guys aren't really capable of doing."

Not only does Sale throw incredibly hard while also mixing in sliders and changeups, his delivery is unique.

Sale loads up in the "inverted W," where both front and back (throwing) elbows are over his shoulders.

As he comes to the plate, Sale drops down and brings it home with a sidearm slingshot. Mechanically speaking, he is violent, and the elbow stress is understandably worrisome in this era of explosive growth in Tommy John surgeries.

Sale might be heading down that path, but he is comfortable with his mechanics despite going on the disabled list with a strained flexor muscle last season.

In 2013, Sale was shut down with shoulder tendinitis, and he was almost moved from the rotation to the bullpen in 2012 after experiencing elbow soreness.

As long as he stays healthy, look for Sale to continue racking up the strikeouts.

"The deception comes with just seeing elbows and knees and everything come at you, and he can throw hard," Ventura said. "But the slider, the changeup, that stuff is deception and you get mesmerized by that and all of a sudden it starts coming out at 96 and you're sitting on 85 - it's hard to catch back up to it. For him, it's always going to be about the deception and being able to throw that changeup like he can and the slider like he can."

In his most recent start, against the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday, Sale had 10 strikeouts and he showed off his full arsenal early.

In the first inning, Sale struck out promising rookie Byron Buxton on an overpowering fastball. For the game, Buxton was 0-for-4 with 4 strikeouts.

In the second inning, Sale got Torii Hunter swinging, even though Strike 3 wound up hitting the veteran outfielder on his back foot.

In the third inning, Sale froze Kurt Suzuki on a breaking pitch that started a foot outside and cut across the plate for a called third strike. It looked like a curveball, was actually a biting slider and can accurately be described as a "slurve."

In the fourth, Minnesota's Kennys Vargas was out on strikes after flailing at a changeup.

Sale and the White Sox wound up losing to the Twins, but the strikeouts continued to pile up.

After most starts, Sale is quick to credit Tyler Flowers for putting down the right pitches. He rarely, if ever, shakes off his catcher.

"I don't talk to him much," Flowers said. "I just try to do the same thing I do with the other guys, do my homework, be as prepared as I can, recognize what they're doing well, what they're not doing well on a given day and then just apply that to what I see out of the hitter and the situations.

"Chris and I really don't have a ton of dialogue as far as him pitching. He pretty much just trusts me to call what I see and what I've studied and looked at on these guys, and he's been doing a great job executing his pitches."

• Follow Scot on Twitter@scotgregor

Pitch tracker

Breaking down White Sox ace Chris Sale's pitch selection this season:

Fastball (four-seam): 43 %

Sinker (two-seam): 11 %

Changeup: 30 %

Slider: 16 %

Source: Brooks Baseball

<b>Sale's strikeout streak</b>6/24 at Minnesota: 10

6/19 vs. Texas: 14

6/14 at Tampa Bay: 12

6/8 vs. Houston: 14

6/3 at Texas: 13

5/28 at Baltimore: 12

5/23 vs. Minnesota: 10

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