There's a cruel twist with Chris Sale's latest injury
BOSTON -- For the first time in a long time, Chris Sale was finally looking like Chris Sale. With a 2.23 ERA over five starts, with his vintage velocity reappearing, and with his strikeout numbers climbing, the 34-year-old looked as good as he had looked in years over the past month.
Then come Thursday night, when Sale had to leave his start early due to a shoulder injury. He's scheduled for an MRI on Friday.
"Hoping for the best," manager Alex Cora said.
While the best remains a possibility, Sale's injury history doesn't inspire too much confidence in that regard. Quite famously, Sale has made just 47 starts since signing his five-year, $145 contract extension with the Red Sox, with 11 of those starts coming this season. Now, it appears as though he's likely to miss some more time.
The cruelest part of it all? Sale had just taken time to reflect on his long, frustrating stretch of injuries in an interview with USA Today's Bob Nightengale. The gist of the article was that the major hurdles appeared to have been in Sale's past, not in his future.
"I'm going out there and having fun again, and not throwing every pitch with three years of hate behind it," Sale told Nightengale. "I'm going out there with the attitude that today is a new day. Take it for what it is. Appreciate it. Because I sure know it can be taken away."
Sale said he had put in a lot of work "to go out there and get it back to being who I needed to be," and Nightengale wrote that Sale was "feeling the best he has since 2019."
"If there's anything I've learned through all of this, is not to get too far ahead. I'm not going to win back three years of lost time with one start or even 10 starts. I just need to unhitch that trailer and let it go, and just focus on the here and the now," Sale said. "I know I'm just a pinky away, a bike ride away, a comebacker away from not being able to do what I love. So, I'm not here for the processes. I'm here to win. I'm here to dominate. "
Unfortunately for Sale, the here and now currently looks like it'll be filled with some more pain and some more time spent recovering rather than dominating.
