Boston Red Sox left-handed fireballer Chris Sale, 34, who has been sidelined with an injury, will not return early. For now, he’s out for the first half.
“Sale has a stress reaction in his left shoulder blade,” Boston said on Tuesday (ET). As a result, Sale was moved from the 15-day disabled list to the 60-day disabled list. His return from rehab is not expected until early August.
According to MLB.com, Sale will not have surgery. However, he will not be able to pitch at all for at least a month.
Boston manager Alex Cora said, “Now we have to be patient. He’s not having surgery. This is a huge thing for us. Now we have to be patient and see where we are in the next four or five weeks,” said Boston manager Alex Cora.
Sale made a start against the Cincinnati Reds on April 2 and left early in the fourth inning with shoulder soreness. He was placed on the disabled list a day later after a third opinion revealed shoulder inflammation.
A week passed. But it didn’t get better, it got worse, which is an odd sign of a stress reaction in the shoulder blade.
Sale was the best left-handed hard-throwing pitcher in the league. His fastball topped out at 161 mph. He won 10 or more games in seven straight years from 2012 to 2018, and stamped his ticket to the All-Star Game without missing a game during that stretch. The highlight was 2018. He went 12-4 with a 2.11 ERA in 27 games, leading Boston to the World Series title. In the postseason, he appeared in five games, going 1-0 with a 4.11 ERA in 15 1/3 innings.
But things went downhill in 2019. Prior to the 2019 season, Sale signed a five-year, $145 million contract extension with the Red Sox, but he was sidelined with elbow pain in August 2019, and in April 2020, he underwent elbow ligament reconstruction surgery.
After a lengthy rehabilitation period, Sale returned in August 2021 and showed signs of a comeback, going 5-1 with a 3.16 ERA that year.
But the bad luck continued. He was sidelined in spring training in 2022 with a stress fracture in his ribs and missed the first half of the season. In his second game back, on July 18 against the New York Yankees, he broke the pinkie on his left hand on a hit-and-run, and in August, while rehabbing, he broke his right wrist while riding his bike, ending his season 먹튀검증.
This season, he made the opening day roster and pitched in the starting rotation, but the injury bug struck again. In 11 games and 59 innings, he was 5-2 with a 4.58 ERA.