The Red Sox announced Tuesday that lefty Chris Sale suffered a fractured right wrist “during a bicycle accident on Saturday, August 6.” The injury required surgery that will end Sale’s 2022 season. He’s expected to be ready for the start of Spring Training.
It’s the latest setback in a mounting pile of injuries for Sale, who has made just 11 starts while playing under the five-year, $145MM contract extension he signed back in March 2019. (The contract began with the 2020 season despite being signed in 2019, as Sale was already under contract for the ’19 season.) Since putting pen to paper on that contract, Sale has missed time with elbow inflammation that eventually culminated in Tommy John surgery, plus a stress reaction in his rib cage and a fractured pinkie finger incurred on a comebacker earlier this summer. Overall, he’s pitched just 48 1/3 innings in the regular season through the contract’s first three years (plus another nine frames in the 2021 postseason).
A healthy Sale is, of course, one of the sport’s most dominant talents. From 2012-18, Sale made seven consecutive All-Star Games and never finished lower than sixth in American League Cy Young voting. Along the way, he pitched to a collective 2.91 ERA in 1388 innings, averaging 30 starts and 198 frames per regular season (plus another 25 postseason innings with Boston). Sale came on in relief and punched out Justin Turner, future teammate Enrique Hernandez and Manny Machado in order to close out Boston’s 2018 World Series victory over the Dodgers, capping off the franchise’s fourth championship since the “curse-breaking” 2004 season.
It’s been mostly downhill for Sale since, as he’s battled fluke injuries and taken some deserved flak for being caught on film destroying a clubhouse television after getting an early hook during a Triple-A rehab game earlier this summer. This latest injury will bring Sale’s 2022 campaign to a close after just 5 2/3 innings.
Sale will turn 34 next March, so it’s still plenty feasible that he can return to form and serve as a foundational piece for the Sox moving forward. He averaged 94.9 mph with his heater during this year’s tiny sample of 5 2/3 frames — right in line (actually slightly better than) his average fastball during that aforementioned seven-year run of dominance between Chicago and Boston.
Given the recent rash of injuries, the Sox surely won’t be banking on 30-plus starts out of Sale, but at the same time, his contract leaves them little choice but to hope for the best. With Nathan Eovaldi, Rich Hill and Michael Wacha all set to hit free agency at season’s end, Sale and righty Nick Pivetta are the only Sox starters who can be penciled into next year’s group. Lefty James Paxton could potentially be in that mix as well; his contract has a pair of $13MM club options for the 2023-24 seasons that must be exercised simultaneously at season’s end. The team almost certainly won’t be taking their end of the deal — Paxton has yet to pitch in 2022 — but Paxton also has a $4MM player option for next season in the event that those club options are declined. Suffice it to say, rotation stability will be a point of emphasis for chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom this winter.
This man is doomed.
He is looking a lot like a head case.
Somebody should go into his locker and rip up his jersey.
Lol imagine his reaction to those yellow and blue ones
Rip up his jersey
He looks like a guy who had a bike accident.
Wrist, not head
There must have been a sale on injuries because he checked out
Put a fork in him. He’s done
I like Chris Sale as a pitcher. What I don’t like is all these injuries outside of baseball activities we always seem to hear about. If I get hurt outside of work I’ll be sitting at home not getting paid at all like most of the population.
Benefits of a collective bargaining agreement, the players negotiated guaranteed contracts. Even the NFL gives out partial guarantees unless you are DeShaun Watson and Cleveland is on the hook for the whole $230 million. Watson’s contract is structured that his yearly salary is only 700k and his roster bonus is 40M. So guaranteed contracts are part of professional sports now.
(1) Bobby Bonilla says hi.
(2) Baseball is not the NFL!
You don’t have sick time, short term disability and long term disability? You should. If its not offered through you job you can buy it through Aflac (among others)
He needs to go find the Voodoo doll that somebody made of him.
Is Brian Cashman actually creole? Because if he is, that’d be the first place I’d look.
Holly molly, talk about snake bit.
I think it’s called Kabbalah.
I had to look that one up.
Good one…
At least it wasn’t his left wrist!
Poor guy. There’s never a missing child on the other end of the drywall when you punch holes in it. Just studs. He is truly cursed.
Every season, poor guy
Poor guy? He’s a professional athlete that has the frame of an anorexic ballerina. He also punches walls and TVs, so I’m not sure he deserves much sympathy. I am a lifelong Sox fan, too.
Bro, don’t skinny shame.
and ballerina shame
Slender Man is going as Chris Sale for Halloween.
“Let people be horrible.”
@animalize- And astick will make their comments and you’ll deal with it also. See how that works?
@animalize: You say you dealt with it fine but you were very clearly triggered by the woke comments, and then when someone does the exact same thing you do, you resort to name calling. So it’s pretty clear here which one of you is the snowflake.
The solution to people skinny shaming is to grow some balls and not care about people skinny shaming
Or to recognize the obvious: that it was a joke. That’ll work too.
Sorry, Dewayne Johnson. Can you send me some of your energy drinks?
Thanks, dude.
Or mute them and not deal with it. Not sure who @animalize was before, but I muted him under his old name.
I liked Chris Sale in the Dire Straits, Money for Nothing video.
Far from poor at least in a monetary sense. Another example of gotta love guaranteed contracts. Being injured a lot or poor performance after signing doesn’t stop the checks from coming in. In this case, at least it is one of the Goliaths that can outspend these setbacks (if/when they choose).
Yes if only the billionaire owners had more protection against possibly not recouping a few millions. Especially after reaping the benefits of undervalued players for the first seven years of their careers.
Sure…..because the true stars don’t still make a lot of money going thru arbitration when they play things out to free agency. This isn’t a simpleton binary thing.Truth lies in the middle. These often majority dead money contracts hurt competitive balance. They fast forward most clubs into some form of rebuild or retool. There should definitely be some price to play poker with minimum payroll for owners to participate (or don’t invest/cry poor), but that would likewise mean a hard cap like other pro sports. Example 150mil min and 225max. Large geographic locales still have unearned advantage to probably make playoffs most years, but disparity wouldn’t be as crazy as it continues to be.
THIS ^^^^^^^ Thank you Mule for the logic.
When did he punch a TV and wall? In the dugout?
During rehab at the WooSox in Worcester, he apologized and paid for the damages…ya ask me that’s passion and he did replace everything. Weird question I have and I can’t believe I’m asking it of a professional athlete I wonder if he’s gone through a diet change? Three freak broken bones all within a year? I think he’s calcium deficient…..
Being hit by a line drive in the hand and falling off a bicycle aren’t really freak injuries. Those are common ways to break a bone.
But also, smashing a TV isn’t passion; it’s psychopathy. Normal adults who are passionate don’t have temper tantrums.
You do not understand what “freak injuries” are
It just doesn’t stop
When he arrives at Spring Training he’s probably going to step on a rake and give himself a concussion at this rate.
Sideshow Chris Sale.
The man continues to catch all the wrong breaks
He caught a nice 20-30 million $$$$ break.
He needs to take lessons from President Biden on how to fall off a bike and not get injured, LOL!
More like the breaks catch him.
Poor guy. Sometimes life’s just one stud in the drywall away from being turned upside down. Truly a struggle.
WTF is wrong with this guy? Why is he riding a bicycle while rehabbing a hand injury as his team is circling the drain in the standings and has been a laughing stock in the field??
He has a broken finger, I would argue riding a bike isnt exactly a high risk event. It was an accident.
Everything is a high risk event with him. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of his and loved the deal DD made with CWS. Winning it all in ‘18 was great and watching many of his regular season starts in `17 and most of ’18 were a lot of fun. It’s just SOOOO discouraging seeing all this stuff happening since the extension.
I’m honestly wondering if he’s getting enough calcium. His life right now is one big osteoporosis commercial, if he sneezes he will crack those ribs again watch. It’s a shame I’m a fan and I love the competitiveness of the guy. He’s that dog every team needs….
You reaaaaally want him to have some type of calcium deficiency lol
Ya can’t be normally that goddamn brittle in your 30s, that’s bad news for every manual labor man in the world….3 separate cases of broken bones within a year….yeah it seems like calcium deficiency to me….It isn’t low testosterone we know that because he has temper issues but that too can make ya lose bone density
I came to the comments looking for a dumb take like Steve’s. An athlete has to work out. If he can’t throw a ball from an injury biking is exactly the type of aerobic workout the team probably recommended for him to stay in shape.
I’m sure they recommended a stationary bike. You know one where his broken finger is wrapped around a handle. Also one where it’s much harder to fall and get hurt, you call Steve’s take dumb but do you really think the team wanted him biking wherever he was biking? They invested all that money and he’s been hurt all year but you think they wanted him biking his neighborhood or mountains or wherever he was? Yeah okay buddy
@Wowwwwww: Exactly!
Unless of course it’s a big insurance scam, with everyone on all sides in on it. Happens *ALL* the time in the dirty industry that is “risk management”.
If he was riding the bike off road then its considered a high risk activity according to the UPC.
@Otto371
Some accidents happen due to unnecessary/excessive risk-taking. But none of us knows if that happened in this case. That’s why there have been clauses in contracts about these kind of things – and there are examples of players fudging the facts about what they were actually doing – or just not giving a damn, as was the case with Tatis, even after hurting himself repeatedly.
Ok Chad
Maybe he just needed to get away to clear his head. I would too if the Orioles were ahead of my team in the standings.
Am I the only one not convinced it was a bike injury when he has punched walls, broken tvs in past, and we are just getting news of the “bike fall” three days later?
Who cares at this point….3rd broken bone in less than a year is hard to do
Rock Paper Scissors injuries for sure!
Was it a stationary bike that he fell off of?
Reminds me of the time when Jim Edmonds was “rehabbing” on a jet ski in Lake Havasu. Good times.
Reminded me of Jeff Kent’s broken wrist from “washing his truck”:
tht.fangraphs.com/tht-live/10th-anniversary-jeff-k…
Dude likes to throw spaghetti arms at inanimate objects. All that happened here. Lot of overanalyzing a grown man who still boxes the walls like it’s Little League.
Jeez Guy can’t catch a break
He would seem to catch them all. He must think breaks are Pokemon.
Hey, Chris, next time you want to go for a ride with bad hands, try a Segway!
Try a stationary bike in the gym.
He might still crash or fall off of it!
I just read that it was his right hand, so now he has a busted finger on his left hand and a broken wrist on his right, that’s terrible luck
Or you didn’t pay your bookie?
2 bad hands? I hope he has a bidet.
I think since he’s signed for 2 more years and he can’t stay healthy (although these last 2 especially the wrist is just s*** luck), they should move him to the pen and make him an stopper in the mold of Andrew Miller can go multiple innings and can close. His stuff will also probably play up a bit more in the pen. I know that’s a boat load of money for a reliever but what have they got with him at this point I don’t think there’s much more to do with him to get any value.
Maybe you don’t remember the last time a team tried to make him a closer. Good luck w that.
He started as a closer with the White Sox and was quite good. Opponents hated to face him because he could throw every pitch in the upper 90’s. I was at a game when he hit 100 & maybe a 101.
Worked so well with David Price. Always room for an expensive long man in the pen.
He breaks more than a kit kat bar
He was back throwing again too; this guy has no luck at all.
Dorothy, your post reminds me of the Hee Haw song.
Bhambrave…I could probably count on 1 hand the number of posters on this site that have seen HeeHaw or know what you are talking about..but I appreciate it – loved me some HeeHaw when it was on
Raff- My favorite was Gunilla Hutton,followed closely by Misty Rowe.
Guess there are more of us than you think judging from the responses. Oh wait, that is a handful.
Gloom, despair and agony on me…
He has lost his motivation. That’s the biggest problem of it.
I’m not an expert but it seems to me that injuries are the biggest problem.
Fabulous avatar! Love it! Dogs are my favorite people.
Dogs aren’t people.
Yeah, they are.
They’re the BEST people.
I wonder what the insurance policy looks like for the club
Gonna have to keep him in a bubble when he’s not pitching.
Him and Anthony Rendon.
You have to feel bad for the guy at this point. I mean, it’s a lost season at this point anyways, but you gotta hope this won’t affect him too much going forward (luckily it’s his no throwing hand/wrist).
Patrick Corbin for Chris Sale. Which side says no?
Get the Cubs involved with Heyward and make it a 3 way deal.
Red Sox.
Corbin and Sale a overpaid injury-prone pitchers at this point. Neither team would benefit
Corbin is massively overpaid but he is taking the ball every 5th day
Hilarious. He was riding a bike, while recovering from or having just recovered from the broken finger, after recovering from or while recovering from all the other injuries?
This is gonna go down as one of the worst contracts in the history of the game.
Watch him play one full season in 2024 to trigger that vesting option and then go right back to being injured… or maybe by that point he won’t feel he needs $20M and just kinda retire?
So baseball is the only thing he’s good at and he sucks at everything else? Even my grandma rides a bicycle and has never been injured not to mention breaking a wrist!
He needs to be a spokesman for All-State, alongside Mayhem.
Rip up his jersey
I remember learning to ride a bike and fell off it and tumbled down a steep, forested hill. Hit my head on a few rocks. Might have lost a bunch of brain cells but don’t remember breaking my wrist.
Was on pace to be a HOFer but been injured every season in recent memory. Solid career. Speedy recovery to Sale.
The Sox rotation is gonna be a train wreck next year.
put a cast on it and send him out to pitch. it’s not his left wrist
Didn’t sale already break his finger, already out 6 weeks
Wasn’t gonna help the Sox anyway. They’re terrible.
Must have been hanging out with Tatis.
What a jerk. I hope his contract had a clause that the Sox can invoke to void the rest of his deal.
Unreal! Unreal man. This defies logic.
Chaim recently said he left his throwing program at Boston College (as Fenway was being used for concerts) on his bicycle to grab lunch and hit something while going down a hill
Well, Chaim can only repeat what he was told. But “something”? I mean, was he going too fast to see what it was…or was he going so dangerously fast that he lost control trying to avoid something or someone?
So I ask, who’s contract is worse, Chris Davis, Jason Heyward or Chris Sale?
Gonna say Chris Sale. Atleast the other 2 have been on or around the field. This guy almost seems to make it a point so he won’t have to go back.
He needs to find that voodoo doll.
I don’t know if I’d be riding a bike with a broken finger but hey I don’t mind seeing Boston go down.
Ridiculous – what an absolute waste of $90M over the past 3 seasons. Injuries are part of sports, but he seems to get more than his fair share. And then an off-field mishap? He would do well to consider some good will back to the team and fans for this one.
Do some good will? Are you under the impression that Sale gets hurt on purpose? Or that bicycle riding is now some dangerous activity that should cause his contract to be voided? Come one now.
Chris Sale hearts getting hurt.
Bum
They need to bubble wrap this guy. Unbelievable
This is shaping up to be David Price all over again. Will they attach him to Devers in a trade this offseason?
Devers is hopefully hear to stay.
Or the Red Sox can do a full season of “openers”. Bloom would love that. It’s so “Rays” like.
I laugh at Chris Sale
No, Chris Sale hurt? I don’t believe it
No, Chris Sale hurt? I don’t believe this
That contract extension is looking better and better each day.
Sale is replacing that guy in the “Mayhem” commercials.
Better yet…. he is the spokesman for Life Alert new promo…. you don’t have to be a senior citizen for “I have fallen and I can’t get up!”
And here I thought he was already out for the season. Maybe this will be applied to next season.
Wow! Can they void his contract for non-baseball related activities that resulted in injury? If it was off road biking then it would qualify.
Is there a person on this planet that actually believes it was a bike accident?
It could very well have been a bike accident caused by riding in a risky/unsafe manner – like excessive speed.
fell off his stationary bike
Sure – “bicycle accident.”
Hey, it could happen to anybody.
live.staticflickr.com/3775/14274570981_9d51e3a9cb.…
OMG!! I was literally laughing out loud at that.
My work here is done.
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Chris Sale does not opt out of his contract at the end of the season.
That’s what I call a bold prediction.
I call that bold talk from a one eyed fat man.
Seriously what a dope riding a bike with a broken hand WTF
It’s incredibly unfortunate how all of these contracts are playing out so badly for the Red Sox. It’s clear that this team was built around Sale as well.
The real puzzling player on this roster (to me) is James Paxton. I thought he was out of baseball for awhile now. I know teams want rotation stability, however, Paxton seems to be the most consistently injured pitcher in the game over the past decade. How does he keep getting work? His agent deserves a raise.
Man, don’t fall off a bicycle in this comment section and expect any sympathy. It amazes me though how many people are just ripping this guy apart without considering that it could have been a stationary bike, we don’t know. If it wasn’t, it could have just been a leisurely ride where something happened too. I just don’t get crushing the guy unless footage comes out where he’s flying off a 30′ ramp.
Why is he riding a bike when he has a broken finger?
This is going to go down as one of the worst contracts in history. Absolute disaster.
Because he’s a moron
Brandon Falls, funny. At least he doesn’t have phony shin-splints
If Fred had enough money, I’m sure he could make falling off a bike look like bone spurs too
Wow! You have got to be kidding me. What an unbelievable run of injuries for Sale.
Someone doing some serious Hoo Doo on Sale. Wonder what Adam LaRoche is up to these days…
From MLB.com:
“Chris had actually just finished up his throwing at [Boston College],” said Bloom. “He took his bike out to go grab some lunch near his house and hit something going down a hill, flew off the bike and I learned about it later that afternoon. He reached out to [trainer] Brad [Pearson], Brad got over there and tended to him.”
He purposely looks for ways to get injured. I’ve defended this man for many years but I can’t no more…soooo sad!!
He is the Kyrie Irving of baseball
The Red Sox are reportedly experimenting with alterations to Sale’s uniform:
th.bing.com/th/id/R.d3c8169307a9e67d759f69ba8b157d…
Yep…punching holes in drywall is just like riding a bike is what it meant to say. Must’ve caught a stud this time. If you buy his unicycling through the hills story I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Sometimes the official story is actually the truth. I have no difficulty in believing that he was riding down a hill on his bicycle, possibly too fast, and wiped out.
??????
If he doesn’t make the roster next year he’s gonzo like college student’s endo.