On July 17, 2022, Chris Sale gave up two earned runs on two hits and recorded two outs before Aaron Hicks sent the baseball right back at him.
The line-drive comeback fractured Sale’s pinky and took him out of the game before the end of the first inning of his second start of the season.
He hasn’t pitched in a game since.
Recovering from a fractured pinky, especially one that was surgically repaired, doesn’t take this long; Sale broke his wrist while rehabbing his finger, and that second injury is what ended his season.
Monday will be the 233rd day since that unfortunate moment at Yankee Stadium and, knock on wood, the end of Sale’s latest stretch on the sidelines.
After his second live batting practice on Wednesday, Alex Cora confirmed to reporters that Sale has the green light. He’ll pitch against the Detroit Tigers on Monday.
How many ways are there to say that it’s been a long road back for the veteran ace? Baseball writers must have exhausted every synonym, metaphor, cliché, and idiom to describe the last few years of his career.
Since the 2018 World Series, cemented so epically by Sale’s ninth-inning stunner, he’s thrown 195.2 innings innings. To put that number in perspective, he pitched 158 regular-season innings in 2018, and led MLB with 214.1 innings the year before.
After 147.1 innings in 2019, Sale went on the injured list in August. Thanks to Tommy John surgery in April 2020, he didn’t return to the major-league mound for almost exactly two years.
Coming back in August 2021, he made nine regular-season starts totaling 42.2 innings with 52 strikeouts, 12 walks, and 15 earned runs (3.16 ERA). He also made three postseason starts that year, totaling another nine innings of work.
Sale’s 2022 season was delayed by a rib stress fracture, but when he first took the mound on July 12 and shut out the Rays for five innings of three-hit ball, he looked like his old self.
And then, the Yankee game. No one’s been more miserable about Chris Sale’s injuries than the man himself. He has no problem telling you that.
But he’ll also tell you how grateful he is, and how good he has it compared to most of the rest of the world.
Watching him throw bullpens at JetBlue Park, his hunger to get back in the game comes off him in waves. The ball slams into the catcher’s mitt like an asteroid cratering the earth’s surface. If he has doubts or concerns, they appear to be superseded by his desire to get out there and prove people wrong.
The watchword, of course, is ‘If.’
If he can stay healthy.
If he can be his old self.
If those years on the shelf haven’t turned him into a Tin Man without an oil can.
Turning 34 on Opening Day, Sale is still chasing his first Cy Young Award. At Winter Weekend, he joked that his arm is three years younger than it should be.
Justin Verlander won his third Cy Young Award last year after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and turned 40 last week.
Roger Clemens won his record seventh Cy Young when he was 42, the oldest winner ever. He won his sixth at 39.
Sale has time. He’s also sick of wasting time.
The clock starts Monday.
Quick hits
— The Red Sox are the last remaining undefeated team this spring. After their tie with the Astros in West Palm Beach on Wednesday, they’re 3-0-2 in preseason games.
— Chaim Bloom told Sports Illustrated’s Inside the Monster podcast that “it was not a shock” to the Red Sox that the Navy is now letting Noah Song play professional baseball. The Phillies claimed Song in the Rule 5 draft back in December.
— The Royals signed Jackie Bradley Jr. to a minor-league contract with an invitation to big-league spring training, the club announced Wednesday.
