The Red Sox have reinstated Chris Sale from the 60-day injured list, the team has announced. A spot on the 40-man roster was opened by Marwin Gonzalez being designated for assignment yesterday. Additionally, Christian Vazquez was reinstated from the bereavement list. To make room for Sale and Vazquez, Yacksel Rios and Connor Wong have been optioned to Triple-A.
This officially ends the star lefty’s journey of over two years away from big league mounds, having last pitched August 13th of 2019. At that time, he was shut down with elbow inflammation and eventually underwent Tommy John surgery in March of 2020.
Prior to this absence, he had been one of the best pitchers in all of baseball for almost a decade. For the eight seasons from 2012 to 2019, he pitched 1,535 1/3 innings with an ERA of 3.05 with 1,896 strikeouts. The 42.8 fWAR he accumulated during that time was third among all pitchers in baseball, behind only Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw.
If Sale is even half as good as that elite level, he’ll provide a huge boost to a Red Sox rotation that has been floundering of late. Martin Perez and Garrett Richards have been moved to the bullpen because of their recent struggles, leaving the club with a three-man rotation of Nathan Eovaldi, Nick Pivetta and Eduardo Rodriguez. (Tanner Houck was recalled to start on Thursday but then optioned to Triple-A the next day.) The club has gone on a cold streak of late, surrendering the AL East lead to the Rays, but still holding onto the second AL Wild Card spot, 2 1/2 games ahead of the Yankees.
I’ve always admired Chris Sale. This will be huge for the Red Sox.
Prior to surgery he was an absolute BEAST!!
He’s the one guy left on the team that I really like and can identify with. Time will tell but hopefully he’s back as strong as ever and spends the rest of his career in Boston.
Welcome back! Good luck, Chris!
Perhaps, we’ll see you in the playoffs.
good grief, I wish him the best and all, but how does Rios keep a job in the Majors?
You left out Robles n David, both have no business pitching in Boston. Bloom can not admit he made a bad trade, which he’s done repeatedly.
Robles had one bad outing. He’s been decent otherwise
Welcome back Chris! It’s been far too long
Agreed.
And you know the trolls of other teams are worried what he can do when they take the time to come in and throw mud wishing lingering injury, inability to perform, etc etc etc all through the comments below.
sorry,, no sale. this team is cooked. and not just for this year, but for the rest of the decade.
You;’re able to forecast the rest of the decade? Very impressiv.e
Well, Sale is better than Bauer even if the Red Sox can’t beat anyone.
TB is about to be FUBAR by the MLB
Have to think Sale’s fire is really going to help the team raise their compete level.
Who didn’t see sales Injury coming? The Sox rode him into the ground, and that pitching motion,
Hurts just talking about it.
One of my favorite pitchers until he became a red suck.
I don’t wish injury on anyone, but I hope he’s a dud when he comes back.
It kind of sounds like you hope he doesn’t pitch well because he was injured. In other words, “I don’t wish injury on anyone, but I hope he isn’t able to come back from his.”
Kind of sounds like you a little slow.
Everyone knew he was going to get injured(probably besides you)
I don’t wish injury on anyone(again, just in case you have trouble comprehending)
But I hope he doesn’t do well. If you pretend you’re a boy scout and wish every player does well, you’re a liar.
Good day..
So you didn’t wish him to get injured, you just wished he would remain injured. Not much of a difference.
No, I said when he comes back I hope he’s not effective. Are you slow?
You did not say “effective”, you said hope he doesn’t come back from “this”, implying the injury.
Get some psychiatric help, your anger is off the charts.
I just hope no one has their career or their chances at being the best athlete they can be impacted because injury. I guess that makes me a Boy Scout? I was unaware that my desire to watch the best players on the planet play well was controversial.
Ghost – You knew Sale was going down to injury? That’s a brave comment two years after it happens. If you had said something with teeth like you knew Sale would go down after Cora changed his delivery I might respect your opinion but you didn’t. See when something is obvious then say it before it happens so afterwards you can actually take credit for your observation. As of now, you are just another troll making after the fact comments. You are trying to be the guy that told us so but you didn’t!!
Nicely said KD.
Ruf, cutting up his team’s jerseys was a complete clown move but otherwise why the beef with Sale?
Whifff – If you had ever pitched you might understand why Sale did it. First, he understood if there weren’t enough of this one particularly uncomfortable jersey they would need to change into another. I’m guessing he attempted to pitch in it and it was terribly uncomfortable. Guys change their jersey when they are soaked in sweat. You want to know why? Because it’s uncomfortable.
Sale did this action as a team leader. Knowing his personality, he took the heat for something everyone was complaining about. Leaders do those type of things and it brings the team closer together. Does it look stupid to the public? Maybe but the fans that get it had no issues with it. This action by Sale wasn’t an insane move by a maniac, it was a calculated move to achieve a goal and it worked. Team leaders do many things to rally the troops and the selfless ones take the heat for the whole team. Just listen to one Sale interview and you’ll understand the type of team mate that he is.
Ruf might just be a Sale hater. It happens. Not by intelligent fans but trolls and guys who may have liked Moncada or someone else in the deal often go after Sale with crap comments. That’s true about every player, manager, GM and owner. There are specific people haters and there are others that comment specifically about performance or actions. Ruf falls in to the people hater category. It’s too bad because Sale is the ultimate team player and deserves better.
Get some mental health help because you need it.
Ouch. Good one 3/10
Watch Tanner Houck throw from the other side. It’s awfully close. Agree it may be rough on the arm, but it sure seems to be effective vs opponents and isn’t that what the team they play for want the most?
Neither Padres or red saux are gonna win their division but which team is more likely to lose their wild card spot ?
Honestly Pads
Houck has been great. He hasn’t pitched at AAA for a month. The Sox “option” him after each start and activate him on the day of his next start. This gives them an extra player.
Let’s see, unless Sale throws a perfect game, with nine immaculate innings, and hits for the cycle, Sox fans will be disappointed.
Two things are evident; (a) he’ll definitely help but (b) it won’t matter much.
Wait and see. Keep the faith. Why not hope? We’ve been watching this team for a long time, if we’ve learned anything since 2004, it’s that the old doom and gloom has been vanquished. I spent all 2018 pinching myself, amazed at how good they were. Kind of like that this year. Let’s see what happens. It might be fun.
This potentially straightens out the rotation while adding depth to the bullpen. “This” being both Sale and Houke. Erod needs some consistent success and Eovaldi and Pivetta are plenty good for the back of the rotation. What they have managed to do this year is noteworthy. Five man rotation starting almost all of their games. Switch two pitchers in and two pitchers out. Nothing great statistically but it could get better for the stretch run. Need to provide some “relief” for the good pieces of the bullpen that are starting to wobble. We’ll see how this plays out.
Oh. I’m far from being discouraged. The East just ain’t what it used to be; all 4 of the contenders have perceptible flaws (only the Yanks have a winning record against the West, e.g.). That middle of the lineup in Boston gets hot, hotter than they’ve been, and they can absolutely run at the division.
The 2018 team WAS good, one of the best of any team I’ve seen in a while. I didn’t think the Dodgers would even come close to a winning a game; and if it wasn’t for that bizarre extra inning affair, they wouldn’t have; that’s how much of a miss-match the Series was.
Bob – Sale starts off good in the first inning!! Devers great on defense as usual. The Butcher of Boston.
Yes, he butchered that grand slam. Boom.
It’s all good.
whyhayzee – Offense is when the bat is in your hands and defense is when the glove is in on hand. The grand slam was offense not defense. I’m guessing you felt compelled to boast about his offense and I take no issue with you. Awesome hitting and bad defense is a norm for him.
I bet I”m not the only fan that is tired of reading about errors at 3B by Devers and all the players that get hits on balls fielded by Devers. If a person was to count the plays that good 3Bs would have have made but Devers didn’t the totals would be radically different, Devers mishandles (error or should have been an error) nearly 50 balls a season!!. I’m counting balls not fielded quickly enough because of his slow reaction time and slow first step, weak grounders with an attempted bare hand, backhanded hard shots down the line where composure is all that is needed since ball arrived so quickly and even missed pop=ups that don’t land in the stands. Lots of Devers errors DO get counted but my guess is unaccounted errors would nearly double his error totals. That’s why getting an Arenado would have made sense, or Chapman or any other above average defensive 3B. The impact to the ERAs and WHIPs would be huge.
Devers mishandles (error or should have been an error) nearly 50 balls a season!
=======================================
So Devers has 15 real errors and 35 imaginary errors?
JB – Math buddy. He has 24 errors per season (162 games) and he gets between 24 and 36 additional free passes a year on balls that would be called an error by fair score keepers (so the range of misplays is between 48 and 60 so I rounded down to 50 which was conservative and you still complained!).
I’ve seen literally dozens of balls that should have been errors called hits and I always laugh when Eck or somebody other than Remy says that’s got to be an error and Remy says no I’m guessing that will be a hit and sure enough the pitcher gets dinged not Devers. Heck, I saw a ball hit him in the shoe because he didn’t bend down far or fast enough and it was called a hit. That’s not a hit in little league!!!
Yes but we usually beat the West when it matters. Astros scare me the most though for any East team.
The Astros scare everyone. That is a testament to Dusty Baker and how good that team is
Rsox – The Astros for me don’t appear as scary as usual because their old team is partially gone and Bregman has been hurt most of the season and Verlander the whole season. When Bregman returns they are probably the 4th scariest team. My list of scary is CWS, TB, TOR, HOU, NYY and OAK. LAA might become scary if and when Trout returns but they still won’t have Rendon. On paper, going into 2022, these are the teams that start the off season with more talent than the Red Sox and ownership will need to invest in their product if they expect to compete in 2022.
When is he expected to start?
As a White Sox I liked Sale but I knew he was due for Tommy John surgery. Sale always started off the season lights out then died down around the end of July. All of the motion Sale’s arm with his delivery had me irk every time he threw pitches. All of that torque in Sale’s elbow with throwing sliders caught up to him.
Kind of glad the White Sox moved Sale at the right time to obtain Moncada and Kopech.
BeeVeeTee – Glad you like the deal from the White Sox perspective but the Red Sox side of the deal has paid far more dividends. Moncada didn’t get the typical 6 years of control, By 2021 (5 of his normal controlled years) the White Sox paid him $41.6M!! The next three years are $14M, $18M and $24M.
Sale was paid $39.5M for 2017-2019 before he got his new contract. Yep, they paid on average $13.2M for Sale during non-controllable years!! Two all-star starts for a pitcher making $13.2M a year!!
Yes, the TJ surgery has made Sale more expensive per game pitched than his first three years but part of his DD contract was recognizing how he was a good soldier and never complained as an elite pitcher making $13.2M a year at ages 28-30 (prime years). Sale’s contract for $145/5 averages under $30M a year and when averaged with his first 3 years in Boston his earnings will be $184.5M for 8 years or around $23.5M!! That’s a fantastic price for an elite pitcher in his prime. Lets face it, his value is so much more than Moncada and Kopech combined while his cost has not been much more than theirs.
SALE WAS and CONTINUES TO BE A STEAL!!! I can’t believe Bloom made such a great deal! OOPS wait that was DD!!!!!
Sale was always an elite pitcher in the first half of the season and he was just an average pitcher in the second half of the season. This was nothing unknown of Sale especially he heavily used his slider early on as his strike out pitch where his numbers were unbelievable in the first half and he just died off after the All Start break. The White Sox coaches to front office pleaded with Sale to not throw a huge amount of sliders early in the season due to the fact those pitches put a lot torque on his elbow where he basically was out of gas by July but he refused to do so.
We can debate this all day but here was one thing that the Terry Francona always did whenever the Indians faced Sale when he was on the White Sox. Francona would stack the batting order with left handed batters against Sale since he refused to throw his change up to them. Left handed batters rocked Sale’s change up so he relied on his slider, rack up seven to ten strikeouts in the first four to five innings, his arm would get tired and the hitters started to rock him.
Moncada has been doing his job this season in the batting line up with taking pitches to give the guys batting in front or behind him better pitches to see and get a hit.
BeeVeeTee – Obviously not a pitcher. The wear and tear on the arm comes more from a fastball than a curve or slider. The funky motion doesn’t mean more wear and tear either. If you had ever pitched you’d know what a long season does to your stamina. It’s not about the arm it’s about arm stamina. Dead arm is the result of too many stress innings not too many sliders.
Sale is slightly built and simply doesn’t maintain his stamina throughout a long MLB season. He’s an all out performer who doesn’t leave anything in the tank so his fatigue factor as the season wears on increases. Another factor that you completely overlooked is his need to pitch high stress innings. You think sliders create stress and that’s just bull crap some penny ante coach from 50 years ago might tell you. What creates fatigue in the pitcher is stress.
How does stress happen? A pitcher gets the first two outs of the inning and throws eight pitches. Then a ball it hit to Devers and he makes an error. Instead of being out of the inning in 10 pitches the inning continues. Now the pitcher throws out of the stretch which removes the momentum of the windup and taxes his stamina more. The next batter gets a double because the pitcher hadn’t thrown any pitches from the stretch and his location isn’t as good as it was in the windup. The at bat goes 6 pitches before the double is hit. The next batter fouls off a bunch of pitches and eventually strikes out. The Pitcher throws 22 pitches instead of 10 because of Devers. The last 12 are at a higher stress level. It makes it far more likely the pitcher will lose an inning that day thanks to Devers. If Sale is the pitcher and he goes 7 not 8 innings then the odds of winning go down all because Devers is a DH playing 3B.
Throughout that game Sale may or may not have other stressful innings but the better the defense, the more likely he will have lots fewer stressful pitches meaning his arm won’t fatigue early reducing the bullpen’s need to pitch that day.
Since Cora is a moron he often takes out 2 or more star players when Sale pitches just like they did in Chicago because they know Sale will beat the team they are playing. What is the impact of that move? More stressful pitches and more fatigue. When the majority of a pitcher’s games in a season are with secondary players in the field, his stamina will be taxed far more than it should have been. That’s the reason Sale for his entire career has become a more average pitcher late in the season. It’s not how many sliders he throws, it’s all about the number of stress innings.
Moncada has been a massive disappointment. Normally the #1 prospect in baseball has a better career than Moncada has had so far. Nobody compares him to modern day #1s like Trout, Acura or even Tatis. He has been better than Buxton but Buxton was over-rated like Moncada and may be the worst #1 ranked prospect in decades. Heck, Devers as bad as he is defensively was the better prospect in the Red Sox organization. Same is true for Bogaerts. Moncada is far closer to Benintendi than Devers when it comes to performance in his first several years.
BeeVeeTee – Moncada was higher rated than Robert, Jimenez, Vaughn and Abreu but nobody in their right mind would consider him better than any of those guys today. Dombrowski made a great trade that benefited the Red Sox far more than the White Sox by recognizing an over-rated prospect and turning him into an Elite starting pitcher that would lead the Red Sox starting staff for nearly a decade..
MLBTR – YOU GUYS NEED AN ARTICLE ON THAT FIELD OF DREAMS GAME!
OMG, just beautiful , pure beauty, what an event , and then the ending OMG!
Watching Costner walk out reminded me why I’ve invested so much of my life to this sport.
For all the negative news going on in the sport today please open up an article on this so we can express all the beautifulness that draws us to the sport and thus your site
Yes I realize the caps lock was on, it EARNED it
Amen brother! Appreciate the game!
Let’s go. If there’s anyone that’s a winner, it’s this guy.
Baltimore couldn’t have come to town at a better time. The team has been struggling all month long but now Sale is back. The offense is starting to click (Bobby Dalbec first career multi Home Run game today). A sweep tomorrow would be huge
Sox got through the most brutal part of their schedule with a wild card spot still. Sale wasn’t throwing 97 he threw 94 for most of the time he pitched. He went just 5 innings but only pitched 90 pitches which is fine by me for now. He will get another tune up start in Texas I fully expect him to win. He seemed to have control for the most part, and he didn’t get shook giving up back to back shots. Adding Sale and Houck and replacing Perez and Richards are really going to help this club. Anybody else find it weird Bobby Dalbec goes on a tear after Kyle Schwarber gets healthy? I guess he doesn’t want to lose playing time, too little too late.
i mentioned this to a friend of mine, so it would be less that virtuous to not mention it here, but imvho, right now, we are the best team in baseball. Perhaps the thinnest team in BB, and we can’t afford much to go wrong, but imho, we have no real weaknesses.
JB – WOW…. very honest and delusional are sometimes the same thing!!
BOS- CWS-TB-TOR-HOU-OAK-NYY are the contenders in the AL
Quick comparison on paper
Catcher – Boston not in top 3
Vazquez-Grandal-Zunino-Kirk-Maldonado-Murphy-Sanchez
Firstbase – Boston dead last
Dalbec-Abreu-Choi-Guerrero-Gurriel-Olson-Rizzo
Secondbase – Boston bottom 3
KHernandez-CHernandez-Lowe-Semien-Altuve-Harrison-LeMahieu
Shortstop – Boston second best but only by SBs for Anderson
Bogaerts-Anderson-Franco-Bichette-Correa-Andrus=Torres
Thirdbase – Boston top hitter worst fielder
Devers-Moncada-Diaz-Biggio-Bregman-Chapman-Urshela
Left Field – No clear cut winner or obvious order – I like Jimenez most
Schwarber-Jimenez-Meadows-Hernandez-Brantley-Canha-Gallo
Cenerfield – Boston not in top 3
Verdugo-Robert-Kiermeyer-Springer-McCormack-Marte-Gardner
Rightfield – Boston not in top 3
Renfroe-Vaughn-Arozarena-Grichuk-Tucker-Brown-Judge
Designated Hitter – Boston makes top 3
JMartinez-Engel-Cruz=Gurriel-Alvarez-Lowrie-Stanton
Offense is the strength of the team and for you to think they are the best overall is just fan loyalty not objective thinking. If 3 positions only make the top 3 of 7 teams there is no way they can be the best. This was so obvious that I didn’t bother showing how much worse it gets when you add pitching.
They are not in the top 5 in talent of the contenders. They were in 2018 but they are far, far below the others due to no Mookie, Dalbec for Moreland, no #2 SP, #4SP,and no viable closer.
CWS for me is most loaded, TOR is next most loaded with talent, then the Yankees and HOU, then TB, then OAK then Boston. TB out performs it’s talent level so it should win the EAST. CWS will win the CENTRAL and HOU should win the west. TOR, NYY and OAK will fight for the 2 wild cards and Boston will work hard to stay ahead of SEA. That’s a talent level evaluation not a prediction of the finish but typically talent dictates finish except when TB is concerned.
Here’s the funny thing though, they won in 2013 with a far worse team than the one they have today. This team is much better than given credit for. Offensively they seem to be coming out of the funk they were in. The starting pitching is improving. The bullpen is still suspect, but they should do a lot better if they don’t have to come in in the third inning of games
Kingbum – There are still many speed bumps in the schedule ahead for the Red Sox. The remainder of August has 5 games at NYY and TB but 3 with MIN and TX at home and 3 on the road in CLE should lead to at least 6 out of 14 wins plus a win on Sunday against BAL. If they can sweep any of the series or not lose to NYY and TB then 6 will grow to a higher number.
September is closer to July. 25 games 14 against NYY, TB, CWS, SEA with 2 against the Mets. The easy games are 3 games at home with CLE and 3 games away at CLE and 3 games home with BAL. They need 6 of 9 or more in those three series to stay in contention. The also must win at least 1 in the series with NYY, TB and CHI and SEA.
The 2nd Wildcard if Sale can dominate may still be a possibility but they’ll need to upset the better teams by winning 2 of 3 in the series.
Between the RS, TB, and the NYY. the teams that the RS have the lowest winning %.
JB – It’s a week later according to the website, is your statement still true?
The Red Sox are in a weak stretch of their schedule and need to sweep both CLE and MIN to have a chance of staying in the 2nd WC hunt. They play TEX today and already missed their chance at a sweep of them.
After the easy part of the schedule ends on 8/29 they play TB 7 times in their next ten games. They’ll need to sweep CLE at home as the other 3 games. Then they play 9 games against CWS, SEA and BAL. They need to sweep BAL and win 2 of 3 in the other two series to stay in contension through Sept 19th. THEN, they play NYY(3), NYM(2) and finish at BAL(3).
It’s critical for them to sweep the bad team and not be swept by the good teams to stay in the chase for the last WC spot. 7 games with TB will either break or make their season.
It’s never mandatory to sweep 2 three-game series. It happens occasionally, but not as often as people think. Even if we were 65% favorites, then the chances of 6-6 are .65*6, or ~ 11.8%.
IRT to the remaining schedule, our opponents’ winning % is .505, with a 14/18 H/A split. If we maintain our current H/A winning %’, account for the slightly unfavorable schedule, we’d win 91.8 games..
^6, not *6