First and foremost, I would like to make it clear that I am to blame for Boston failing to complete a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees at Fenway this past weekend because I had missed the entire series while away on a trip before returning home to watch Sunday night’s game in which the Red Sox notably stunk up the place. That’s on me for choosing to sit down and watch the game, knowing I am bad luck when it comes to things like that. Apologies to all. That one’s on me.
Secondly, let’s all admit that Chris Sale downright stinks this season. As you can tell by the title, I’ve come to the conclusion that Chris Sale is the primary difference between last season’s World Series champions and this season’s in-the-Wild-Card-race team. The bullpen has been another massive issue, of course, but Sale has started 22 games for Boston this season and has recorded losses in ten of them. Ten losses in twenty-two starts from the ace of your pitching staff is less than ideal and happens to be a huge reason why Boston is in third place in the American League East, 9.0 games out of first place and 1.0 game out of the second AL Wild Card spot. With the trade deadline fast approaching tomorrow, July 31, that is a tough situation to be in.
On Sunday Sale let the bottom of the lineup dominate him, most notably allowing a moonshot of a two-run home run over the Green Monster to catcher Austin Romine (9 hitter) as well as letting Cameron Maybin (8) cross the plate twice and allowing an RBI double to Gio Urshela (7) to continue laying the damage on the Red Sox. Spoiler alert: these guys are bums, more or less. The ace of your rotation shouldn’t be letting the bottom of a lineup beat him up in a game where his team has the opportunity to sweep the Yankees and come within seven games of them of first place. Boston had the chance to make this series a historical one against New York after Didi Gregorious essentially guaranteed victory over Boston (again) before the series even started. In typical 2019 Red Sox and Chris Sale fashion, they left fans wanting just a little bit more, knowing they could have given them just that – a little bit more.
Sale allowed three walks against the Yankees on Sunday, another trend of which that has surfaced this season from the lefty that was virtually unheard of before from him. Through his 22nd start of 2019 on July 28, Sale has allowed 35 free bases to batters. To put this into perspective, Sale allowed 34 walks through 27 starts in 2018. Sale is on pace to allow 45 walks this season, which would be the third-most allowed in a single season in his nine-year career. Again, less than ideal coming from a pitcher who NEVER walks batters. Since I started paying close attention to Sale back in 2015 when his name began getting linked to Boston in trade rumors, it’s been ingrained in my brain that walks out of him have been rare. The fact that he’s allowing 1.5 walks per game this season is mind-boggling to me and is one of the multiple facts that give me a reason to believe he isn’t 100 percent healthy.
In Sunday’s loss, Sale allowed six earned runs, making it the sixth time in 2019 that the 30-year-old has allowed at least five runs in a start. Again, it is extremely unlike Sale to allow that many runs in any single game at any given point throughout the season. Last season, Sale allowed more than four runs in a game only once, coming in a random game in late May against a National League team. Sale’s 2019 ERA currently stands at 4.26 with a home ERA of 4.79. Last season, Sale’s ERA came in at 2.11 and had a Fenway ERA of 2.59. Sale is well-known for his two-point-something ERAs as he has never finished a season with an ERA higher than 3.41. Seeing his ERA totals in the fours at the end of July is concerning.
The most aggravating part of his most recent start versus the Yankees was the fact that Sale had just seemingly begun figuring it out. In his previous two starts heading into Sunday, Sale had allowed just two runs and struck out a combined 22 batters, including recording his first win at Fenway in over one year. It appeared as if limiting his workload early in the season had begun paying off. It appeared falsely. We still have yet to find out if Boston deciding to give Chris Sale pitch and inning limits in April and May will pay off; we’ll find that out in August, September, October. But keep in mind, August begins in two (2) days. The clock is ticking.
It’s been four total months now of inconsistency and bad, bad starts from Boston’s ace, the same ace who just received a 5-year, $145 million contract extension this past March. I’m not saying that the money has gotten to Sale and now that he made bank he can just sit back, suck and not care, because if I have learned anything about this guy during his tenure here in Boston, he is the opposite of that guy. Regardless, his collective performance this season absolutely feels like he turned into that guy. At the same time, my heart knows that isn’t who he is. That’s why I’m beginning to think he isn’t 100 percent healthy.
Just by looking at him and having basic knowledge of this human being, it’s quite evident that the 180-pound, 6-foot-6-inch string bean that is Chris Sale deals with health struggles. His elbow has been a perpetual issue for the lefty throughout his professional career. I won’t insert a picture because it’s disgusting and I would rather not have that material on my computer, but if you want to be reminded of how gross the human body is, either Google or Twitter search “Chris Sale elbow” in images and prepare to cringe. What I’m getting at here is, it’s impossible for me to believe that Sale is completely healthy. His elbow will forever and always be a concern to me coupled with the fact that the Red Sox love keeping injuries secrets and/or downplaying injuries that turn out to be bad. I do believe that if something was really wrong, the Red Sox would be sure to take care of him but nonetheless, I get the feeling that something is off with him and something has been off health-wise with him all season but both he and the team are trying to keep it under wraps.
It’s also a real possibility that he just sucks this season. I find that hard to believe, but that could just be the homer in me trying to block out any negative thoughts about my king, Sir Christopher Allen Sale. After every start he makes, good or bad, he makes sure to beat himself up to the media and provide some badass, self-aware quotes. Like clockwork, it happens every time. This season has been no exception. In any and all of his postgame press conferences/media availabilities this season, Sale has yet to bring up any health-related issues. Obviously, if they were trying to keep things on the down-low about his health then Sale would be the last person to spill the beans, but still. Sale gives me the impression that he’s brutally honest and would just come out and say “Hey, I’m not feeling great lately, my elbow has been tight” or something like that. Instead, in typical Chris Sale fashion, he goes in on himself and reminds everyone why the Red Sox traded for him and eventually extended him in the first place by saying things like this:
“I really kind of sucked the life out of us today and it was the deciding factor. That’s the toughest part. We had a really good chance to put the dagger in and I just left the door open.”
“To come out here and be flat-out terrible, it’s tough.”
It certainly isn’t rare for athletes to go in on themselves after a lackluster performance but there’s something about the way Chris Sale words it that makes it that much more badass. “I sucked the life out of us today” isn’t something you’re going to hear too often from anyone, let alone from the selfish breed that is baseball players. It’s eternally refreshing to hear Sale’s postgame comments about himself because he takes that selfishness that every baseball player possesses to another level. When things go well for him he still finds ways to cherry-pick the negatives from his performance. When things go poorly, the only thing he blames is himself. It simply doesn’t get old. Now, if only he could take what he says and put it into action every next start…
I’ve noticed a couple of noteworthy command issues from Sale this season, too, that I figured I’d mention. On Sunday, he threw only 56 of his 100 total pitches for strikes, something that is very, very uncharacteristic of him. I don’t have the numbers on this but it feels to me as if he’s throwing more changeups than he has in previous years. If I’m Sale, I stick to what I know, which is my fastball and slider. Don’t try to get fancy, just throw what you always have, which is primarily those two pitches. He should be throwing, 90-95 percent fastball and slider and the rest changeup. In turn, his slider and fastball command has been noticeably finicky. He isn’t throwing as hard as he has in the past (thankfully) and because of that he needs to put the two together and learn how to not throw 98 MPH fastballs every single pitch and I think the thought of that is throwing him off, which is understandable. At the same time, if this team wants to succeed in October and even make it to October, Chris Sale needs to step it up and remind us all why he is the ace of this pitching staff.
I’ll admit, I’m nervous about what the next two months hold for Sale. August has notoriously been his “bad” month through his professional baseball career. Ironically, he needs to make this August potentially the best of his professional baseball career. The Red Sox simply can’t make a run if Sale doesn’t assist in anchoring this team. Boston has done a relatively phenomenal job of staying afloat as a team and in the standings despite maddening inconsistency and a disturbing number of hiccups. At the same time, they need to step on the gas from this point forward. Two months is both plenty of time and not enough time to clean up the mess they’ve made thus far this season. They have the talent and ability to clean up this mess but I can’t help but wonder if they will put it together. Time will only tell. Until then…Dave Dombrowski, PLEASE go acquire an arm. PLEASE. I and so many others beg of you.
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