Chris Sale aiming to return

BigSoxFan

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Sox have paid $90M for 48 Sale IP from 2020-2022. Solid. Injury clearly not his fault but he didn’t look good in the first inning either. Had the injury not happened, we’re likely talking about how Sale looked mediocre or worse.

Only 2 more years to go on that horrendous contract extension. Yay.
 

moondog80

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Obviously it’s not his fault, but there’s always SOMETHING with this guy. It’s gotten tiresome. The only emotion I feel when I see he’s hurt again is disgust. If it wasn’t a line drive it would be dengue fever or something.

Lost in all of this is that he was getting his ass kicked by the Yankees in that inning before he got hurt, so it’s not like he was even helping that much. Never, ever count on him to contribute, it’s utter madness.
The guy got hit in the hand with a line drive, a freak accident. I'm sorry you find it tiresome but if the only emotion you felt it disgust, you are a bitter, bitter person. Perfect for the internet.
 
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Philip Jeff Frye

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Obviously it’s not his fault, but there’s always SOMETHING with this guy. It’s gotten tiresome. The only emotion I feel when I see he’s hurt again is disgust. If it wasn’t a line drive it would be dengue fever or something.

Lost in all of this is that he was getting his ass kicked by the Yankees in that inning before he got hurt, so it’s not like he was even helping that much. Never, ever count on him to contribute, it’s utter madness.
I'll tell you what's tiresome - it's poster using fluke injuries as some sort of Rorshach test about their feelings about a player. Chris Sale is kind of a weirdo and he's an anti-Vader, so his injuries are some sort of moral failure on his part, but somebody like, say, Dustin Pedroia, who was a beloved gamer, could get fluke injuries that make his contract an albatross too and nobody held it against him.

I say this as someone who is generally sympathetic to your "the sky is falling" posts this season, because generally the sky has been falling for much of the year, but the indignation is really overdone.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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Lost in all of this is that he was getting his ass kicked by the Yankees in that inning before he got hurt, so it’s not like he was even helping that much. Never, ever count on him to contribute, it’s utter madness.
double by LeMahieu
HBP of Judge
weak grounder to 1B
throwing error by Devers
groundout to SS
line drive off his hand

Yeah, not a dominant start to the game but hardly a disaster of Sale's making. One hard hit ball, one hit by pitch, then three groundballs that should have had him out of the inning with maybe one run scored. But I guess that doesn't fit the narrative that he's a shit pitcher who never does anything right anymore.
 

LesterFan

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double by LeMahieu
HBP of Judge
weak grounder to 1B
throwing error by Devers
groundout to SS
line drive off his hand

Yeah, not a dominant start to the game but hardly a disaster of Sale's making. One hard hit ball, one hit by pitch, then three groundballs that should have had him out of the inning with maybe one run scored. But I guess that doesn't fit the narrative that he's a shit pitcher who never does anything right anymore.
Also worth noting that while the line drive was hit hard, Jeter was positioned perfectly behind Sale and probably makes a play on it if it didn't hit off his hand. Just bad luck all around.
 

twibnotes

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The got got hit in the hand with a line drive, a freak accident. I'm sorry you find it tiresome but if the only emotion you felt it disgust, you are a bitter, bitter person. Perfect for the internet.
This. As I recall they hit one ball out of the infield, and it was off the end of the bat.

I am as frustrated as anyone, but blaming Sale is absurd. No one is more pissed off and frustrated than he is
 

Rovin Romine

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Obviously it’s not his fault, but there’s always SOMETHING with this guy. It’s gotten tiresome. The only emotion I feel when I see he’s hurt again is disgust. If it wasn’t a line drive it would be dengue fever or something.

Lost in all of this is that he was getting his ass kicked by the Yankees in that inning before he got hurt, so it’s not like he was even helping that much. Never, ever count on him to contribute, it’s utter madness.
The Hesketh doth protest too much.
 

AB in DC

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I’ve been annoyed with him for a while but it seems more than a little weird to basically be blaming Sale for today’s injury.
We really should be blaming Devers. If he throws the ball to 1B on a soft grounder like any other shortstop, Sale would have been out of the first and pitching to Hicks from the windup in the second.
 

BroodsSexton

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I'll tell you what's tiresome - it's poster using fluke injuries as some sort of Rorshach test about their feelings about a player. Chris Sale is kind of a weirdo and he's an anti-Vader, so his injuries are some sort of moral failure on his part, but somebody like, say, Dustin Pedroia, who was a beloved gamer, could get fluke injuries that make his contract an albatross too and nobody held it against him.

I say this as someone who is generally sympathetic to your "the sky is falling" posts this season, because generally the sky has been falling for much of the year, but the indignation is really overdone.
He’s a Jedi?
 

FisksFinger

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Not that anyone asked, but I'm also just tired of Sale. I in no way think it's his fault or any kind of karma bs, but it's just tiring as a fan to have this guy not be able to contribute for so long.

Also agree with the points that he was shaky (at best) to start the game which adds to my feeling of being tired of the guy.
 

scottyno

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It’s who he is. It’s who he has been forever. It’s who he‘ll be forever.
Between 2012 and 2018 the fewest regular season starts he made in a year was 26, and the fewest innings he threw was 158, so this would be, not surprisingly coming from you, not at all true.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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Wow. I like…. Hate Chris Sale…. But yeah…. It’s tiresome and the guy is snake bitten…. This was shit luck.
How this is on anyone or being pissed the the Sox should have prepared for a healthy Ssle in March to pitch 5.66 innings (actually they did and his replacement has been pretty good) is craziness
 

lexrageorge

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We can yell about Sale’s contract, but the VP of Baseball Ops that signed him is long gone in part due to this contract.
 

BigSoxFan

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We can yell about Sale’s contract, but the VP of Baseball Ops that signed him is long gone in part due to this contract.
That doesn’t really make me feel any better. That extension was a gigantic organizational failure. I’m glad that the likelihood of repeating said failure is probably reduced with Bloom here now.
 

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We can yell about Sale’s contract, but the VP of Baseball Ops that signed him is long gone in part due to this contract.
Do we have any knowledge that this is part of why he was let go, or is it just speculation? Because I've never bought it.
I think he was let go because the team needed someone to rebuild the system, and that's not his thing. He did his thing and the team won a championship, and his usefulness was pretty much gone.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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You've been mostly AWOL while the Sox were playing better and when things turn to shit you return with a vengeance and today seems to be your Christmas morning with the "Sale's made of glass" crap. Seriously, you're one of the guys who should be telling you to do better.
I was on vacation out of the country when they went on that run. Sorry I couldn’t take time from real life to comment at your command.

Like everyone else here I comment when I want and when I can. Deal with it.

Sale has been constantly injured for nigh four years now. It’s aggravating as hell. Obviously today was shit luck but he can’t stay healthy for one reason or another. As another poster pointed out, they’ve gotten 49 IP out of him while paying him $90 million.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Between 2012 and 2018 the fewest regular season starts he made in a year was 26, and the fewest innings he threw was 158, so this would be, not surprisingly coming from you, not at all true.
And he was built like a guy who could slip down in the shower drain and had a long history of pitching poorly late in seasons and has been on a long and torturous decline since Aug 2018 and hasn’t been right since. Four years is an eternity in baseball and that’s what it’s felt like watching him try to stay healthy.

He’ll say all the right things about coming back yet again. I hope the Sox make contingency plans for going forward without his services.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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Do we have any knowledge that this is part of why he was let go, or is it just speculation? Because I've never bought it.
I think he was let go because the team needed someone to rebuild the system, and that's not his thing. He did his thing and the team won a championship, and his usefulness was pretty much gone.
That’s the way I took it as well. The owners changed focus and wanted to rebuild from within and that’s not what DD does. It seemed strange at the time because the whole world knew that DD would build a good team at the cost of the farm system so ownership shouldn’t have been surprised, but maybe they got spooked over payroll.
 

moondog80

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Every team that signs huge deals has some of them go terribly. Are the Yankees still paying Jacoby Ellsbury? I didn’t like the Sale deal when it was signed and it’s worked out worse than I could have imagined, but this isn’t Pablo Sandoval where the guy just can’t be bothered to stay in shape. He’s more frustrated about the whole thing than all of us combined. I’m going to continue to root for the guy to salvage something, because what’s the alternative?
 

scottyno

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And he was built like a guy who could slip down in the shower drain and had a long history of pitching poorly late in seasons and has been on a long and torturous decline since Aug 2018 and hasn’t been right since. Four years is an eternity in baseball and that’s what it’s felt like watching him try to stay healthy.
Again, not factually correct. Worse yes, poorly no.

Career 3.26 era in August 3.77 in September, and the September one appears to be pretty heavily BABIP influenced. Strikeout rate is in line with his career norms. Not surprisingly in general pitching is worse in the 2nd half of a season.

He also wasn't awful in 2019 and didn't seem hurt at all for the majority of the year, he nearly set his career high in k/9.
 

mfried

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double by LeMahieu
HBP of Judge
weak grounder to 1B
throwing error by Devers
groundout to SS
line drive off his hand

Yeah, not a dominant start to the game but hardly a disaster of Sale's making. One hard hit ball, one hit by pitch, then three groundballs that should have had him out of the inning with maybe one run scored. But I guess that doesn't fit the narrative that he's a shit pitcher who never does anything right anymore.
None of his pitches were crisp, and he knew it. The number of changeups was evidence of the absence of both his slider and fast ball.
 

soxin6

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Yesterday’s game was not off to a great start and Sale looked far from dominant, but the injury was a fluke. Having said that, I do think that the Red Sox need to consider Sale’s contract to be a sunk cost, like they had to do with Pedroia, and expect to get nothing out of Sale. If he makes it back and pitches well, then the team will be even better than expected. What Bloom shouldn’t do is go into spring training expecting any innings from Sale because history tells us they won’t happen. The extension was a mistake and the financial commitment may be one of the reasons the team doesn’t have better talent right now, but Sale can’t be traded and isn’t going to retire so we all need to move on.
 

Minneapolis Millers

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Do we have any knowledge that this is part of why he was let go, or is it just speculation? Because I've never bought it.
I think he was let go because the team needed someone to rebuild the system, and that's not his thing. He did his thing and the team won a championship, and his usefulness was pretty much gone.
That was likely part of the underlying rationale, but it doesn’t explain shitcanning him in early September. Something went wrong, internally. My guess has always been bad communication by DD, possibly some rogue decision making in the prior offseason, with ownership taking a “this better work or it’s your ass” approach. Or maybe ownership was fickle and callous. But the whole process never added up.

Anyway, back to our current, crumbling season. The ASB coulda come a week earlier…
 

grepal

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Jul 20, 2005
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Sox have paid $90M for 48 Sale IP from 2020-2022. Solid. Injury clearly not his fault but he didn’t look good in the first inning either. Had the injury not happened, we’re likely talking about how Sale looked mediocre or worse.

Only 2 more years to go on that horrendous contract extension. Yay.
I am trying to look at it the way I view Davis Price. Would we have won the last two World championships the Sox won without Price or Chris Sale. My guess is maybe not so if the cost is what we are paying now so be it
 

Was (Not Wasdin)

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I am trying to look at it the way I view Davis Price. Would we have won the last two World championships the Sox won without Price or Chris Sale. My guess is maybe not so if the cost is what we are paying now so be it
I'm pretty sure they would have won at least one of those two with no contributions from either Price or Sale.
 

jtn46

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Yesterday’s game was not off to a great start and Sale looked far from dominant, but the injury was a fluke. Having said that, I do think that the Red Sox need to consider Sale’s contract to be a sunk cost, like they had to do with Pedroia, and expect to get nothing out of Sale. If he makes it back and pitches well, then the team will be even better than expected. What Bloom shouldn’t do is go into spring training expecting any innings from Sale because history tells us they won’t happen. The extension was a mistake and the financial commitment may be one of the reasons the team doesn’t have better talent right now, but Sale can’t be traded and isn’t going to retire so we all need to move on.
What does that mean? What change is made if they consider it a sunk cost? Sure they shouldn't plan on 200 innings from him but all that means is they potentially throw $12 million at a flotsam pitcher to eat innings, a massive move like DeGrom is just a matter of if they have the payroll flexibility to do it, it wouldn't be a Sale contingency move.
 

joe dokes

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None of his pitches were crisp, and he knew it. The number of changeups was evidence of the absence of both his slider and fast ball.
But, like a lot of good pitchers do he would've been out of the inning unscathed regardless of his early stuff.
 

grepal

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I'm pretty sure they would have won at least one of those two with no contributions from either Price or Sale.
maybe, we will never know, but my point is that the cost of a world championship is sometimes. mortgaging a part of the future. in these instances, contracts that tied the Sox hands somewhat. having to lose Mookie hurt a tom, if we have to lose Bogey and Devers, due to the Sale money it is sickening. However, at least we got the two World Series wins. IMHO, it will be a miracle for this year's club to win it all. I would see what I can get for Martinez and Eovaldi and maybe Vazquez if we won't sign him. Try and sign Bogey and especially Devers. If the Sox are unwilling to pay the price to sign the left side of the infield, they need to trade it away and stink. The moral of the story is never fall in love with a player, don't but merchandise with a player's name on it. I thnk the first base experiment is over if anybody wants what we currently have there let them take it.

I hope I am wrong, but Trevor Story should be sent packing while he has some value too
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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When you have a guy that is supposed to be your ace... who is healthy in the Fall of '21 and still healthy through the Spring and is being paid $30M clams, that guy is and should be expected to be your opening day starter. Having a "backup plan" due to injury history is good and all... but Bloom did that with Rich Hill. And it generally worked out pretty damned well! A backup plan can't ever be realistically expected to be as good as that Ace, right? After all... it's a backup plan. Maybe... it may work out better... but that's nobody's expectations.
What should Bloom have done in this case? Sign a $25M year pitcher? I don't think Bloom was given a blank check on the team and the rotation already had $60M committed to it with just two starters
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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What does that mean? What change is made if they consider it a sunk cost? Sure they shouldn't plan on 200 innings from him but all that means is they potentially throw $12 million at a flotsam pitcher to eat innings, a massive move like DeGrom is just a matter of if they have the payroll flexibility to do it, it wouldn't be a Sale contingency move.
I don't think they're quite at the point where they'll consider him a sunk cost, but we'll see if he needs surgery on the finger which might keep him out the rest of the year.

At some point they'll need the roster spot more than they'll need Sale's potential to come back, but that's not likely this year. Next year could be a very different story.
 

amfox1

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https://www.healthline.com/health/orif-surgery#:~:text=“Open reduction” means a surgeon,ORIF is an urgent surgery.

Open reduction internal fixation (ORIF) is a surgery to fix severely broken bones.

It’s only used for serious fractures that can’t be treated with a cast or splint. These injuries are usually fractures that are displaced, unstable, or those that involve the joint.

“Open reduction” means a surgeon makes an incision to re-align the bone. “Internal fixation” means the bones are held together with hardware like metal pins, plates, rods, or screws. After the bone heals, this hardware isn’t removed.

Generally, ORIF is an urgent surgery. Your doctor might recommend ORIF if your bone:
  • breaks in multiple places
  • moves out of position
  • sticks out through the skin
To my layperson eyes, it does not look like he'll be back this season.
 

Marciano490

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Here’s a question - can’t you throw most pitches without your pinky being on the ball?
 

DeadlySplitter

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DRS said season ending if operative fracture. Best I'm seeing is 3 months minimum recovery, which would be mid-October, so... yeah.