The race for most valuable player typically is headlined by a position player among the top of the leaderboard in one or more of the Triple Crown categories (average, home runs and RBI).

But every once in a while, a pitcher comes along and throws a wrench into the works. This year that pitcher is Chris Sale of the Boston Red Sox.

Sale is in the midst of a monster season. The 28-year-old ace is setting career highs in strikeout percentage (36.5 percent of batters faced, a major league high), WHIP (0.880) and ERA (2.57, lowest in the American League).

Sale is buzzing through the league with four pitches in his arsenal – a four-seam fastball, a sinker, a slider and change-up – with the fastball and slider accounting for 213 of his major league leading 229 strikeouts this season. His 15 games with 10 strikeouts or more this year is a major league best in 2017; only Randy Johnson and Nolan Ryan had more games with double-digit strikeouts than Sale at this point of the season.

Sale also has a good chance of recording 300 or more strikeouts. Clayton Kershaw (301 in 2015) is the only pitcher in the last 15 years to reach that milestone.

Sale’s historic performance should make him the runaway choice for the AL Cy Young, but there are some purists who feel that because a pitcher plays every fifth day, he shouldn’t be in the conversation as the league’s MVP.

Hogwash.

Sale is having a better season than Kershaw (2014) or Justin Verlander (2011) did when they won MVP awards. Sale has been the most valuable player in baseball this season – and it isn’t close. His seven wins above replacement (WAR) is one more than sluggers Aaron Judge and Jose Altuve, and two more than Corey Kluber and Max Scherzer, the next two most valuable pitchers in baseball.

Leading the league in Fangraphs WAR is significant. The National League MVP has ranked No. 1 in that category in eight of the past nine seasons. The AL doesn’t have as strong a track record at rewarding the league leader in WAR, but the first-place finisher has been named the MVP four times since 2007 and in two of the past three seasons.

And Sale still has between nine and 10 starts remaining – including Sunday night at Yankee Stadium – giving him a chance at between 8.9 and 9.2 WAR in 2017.

Not only would that be the highest among any of the 22 pitchers who have been named the league’s MVP, it would be the most by a pitcher since 2006, the first year MLB initiated its leaguewide drug testing program.

Perhaps there was a time when a pitcher’s workload relative to a position player’s needed to be taken into account, but the data and technology we have at our disposal has made that reasoning a thing of the past. Now a pitcher’s performance can be looked at side by side with a hitter, giving us a clear picture of value, leaving no doubt that Sale should be the league’s most valuable player.

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