Chris Sale Is a Born-Again Spring Training Enthusiast

Boston’s ace is finally healthy, happy and hurling heat at spring training after playing in just 11 games over the past three seasons.

On the worst days, Chris Sale could not imagine a moment like this, the crowd cheering and his teammates hollering as he strode off the field having done his job. And there were a lot of worst days. When was the low point?

“When wasn’t it?” he said. “Honestly. When you get knocked down like that, it’s tough. You gotta collect yourself to get back up.”

The Red Sox ace was knocked down often enough in the past three years that chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom joked he was going to assign someone to find and recover the “Chris Sale voodoo doll.” Sale lost 2020 and most of ’21 to Tommy John surgery, then missed the first three and a half months of last season with a stress fracture in his rib cage, only to break his left pinky finger in his second start. Then, just as he resumed throwing, he broke his right wrist in a bicycle accident. He has made 14 starts since his 31st birthday. He turns 34 this month.

He has lamented that he feels he is not earning the five-year, $145 million extension the Red Sox gave him before the 2019 season. 

So you’ll have to forgive him for the butterflies he felt in his stomach before he took the mound here at JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, Fla. on Monday for his first competitive outing in 10 months. The Red Sox beat the Tigers 7–1 to remain the only perfect spring training team, which did not matter at all. The stats that did: two innings, two hits, two strikeouts, no runs, one pitch clock violation and a smile almost big enough to see it in Boston.

“I’m a baseball player,” he said. “I've done this my whole life. I couldn't tell you my first memory of playing baseball because I did it before I knew anything. And that got taken away for quite a while and it was frustrating. There are tougher times to be had, but I went through a tough time. And I got it back, and I just appreciate it more. I'm trying to have fun with it. I'm trying to be more open-minded. I'm trying to soak more things in and just really appreciate it because I was 21 not too long ago: first time in spring training, walking around the room, eyes wide open looking at the big guys walking around the clubhouse. I'm here now. It went fast. And there might have been some days I could have maybe appreciated things more. I don’t want that to happen anymore.”

Sale finished in the top five of voting for the American League Cy Young Award every year from 2013-18, but has only made 11 starts the last three seasons :: Nathan Ray Seebeck/USA TODAY Sports

His teammates and coaches have noticed a certain joy about him this spring, as he seems thrilled to perform even such drudgery as taking ground balls and throwing live batting practice.

“The best thing you can say to him is he’s normal now,” said pitching coach Dave Bush. “He’s on a normal schedule, just like everyone else in the rotation, and I think when you go through enough rehab time, to do everything that everyone else is doing is probably the biggest relief.”

Sale was delighted early in the spring when someone asked him what he was rehabbing to say: Nothing.

“There's a certain lightness to being back to baseball,” he said. “I’m not going in there and having to get this thing checked out or stretch this out or rub this down or whatever it is. I just show up like everyone else shows up, sharpen my ax the same way, work hard, go out there and compete. That’s where I want to be.”

He did compete on Monday, touching 96 mph on a radar gun that he joked later was “helping me out.” Manager Alex Cora agreed that “that thing wasn’t working” but said he believed Sale had been able to hit mid-90s.

“It’s still Chris Sale,” Cora said, adding, “95 from the get-go, I don’t like that sometimes—it’s too soon for him to do that—but I understand. We’ll take care of him.”

Sale also cursed himself when he forgot to back up first base in the first inning and cost himself a double play. But he was delighted to have a chance to be annoyed about the miscue.

“There's a lot of work that went into this, not only for myself, but everybody here,” he said. “I'm just very thankful for those people—the training staff, the guys in the weight room, my teammates, my friends, my family, everybody. I wouldn't be here without all of them. There’s no question. So appreciation is not even enough for how I feel about everybody in this organization and my family and my friends that got me here.”

Then he headed back into the clubhouse to begin his post-start routine. He’s scheduled to pitch again on Saturday, five days from now. Just like normal.