BOSTON — The light at the end of the tunnel is finally visible for Chris Sale.
The injured lefty is expected to get on the mound three times next week before the Red Sox re-evaluate him, but the next step could be a rehab assignment to kickstart his return to the big leagues for the first time since last October.
“I’m not 100 percent sure, but probably,” manager Alex Cora said of Sale’s pending rehab assignment.
Sale fractured a rib in February while the MLB owners were still locking out the players. Sale was working out at Florida Gulf Coast University when he suffered the injury, but the Sox weren’t aware of the extent of it until the lockout was lifted in March.
He was placed on the 60-day injured list to start the season and won’t be eligible to return until at least June 8, though that timeline is unlikely given he would probably need several rehab starts in the minors.
He threw about 25 pitches in a bullpen session this week and is feeling good, Cora said.
“Good fastball, good slider, good change-up,” the manager said. “Now, the plan is for him to get on the mound three times next week … I haven’t talked to him today. Just got the reports and everybody feels like it went well.”
Highly anticipated debut
The Sox rotation has been a strength all year, and they’ll add one more to the crew on Saturday.
Josh Winckowski, a 23-year-old prospect sent by the Royals in the Andrew Benintendi trade last year, will make his big league debut and start the second game of a scheduled doubleheader against the Orioles at 6:10 p.m. ET.
“We’ve been talking about him,” Cora said. “We thought about it in the Texas series but we felt we were going to be OK the way we did it and I think we did … I think, forget the baseball part of it, for him, to map it out and have his family here and everybody here, it’s a lot easier than just, fly to Texas and pitch and then everybody misses the whole thing.”
A 15th-round draft pick by the Blue Jays in 2016, Winckowski has been sensational since joining the Sox’ system last year. He had a 3.94 ERA and 1.23 WHIP between Double-A and Triple-A in ‘21, and will enter his start on Saturday having posted a 3.13 ERA and 0.85 WHIP for Triple-A Worcester this year.
The 6-foot-4 right-hander throws a fastball in the mid-to-high 90s and adds a change-up, slider and split-finger.
“He’s been really good for us,” Cora said. “He’s a guy that we really like. He competes with himself, with everybody. He wants to be great. It should be fun.”
Nathan Eovaldi will start the first game of the doubleheader, which kicks off at 12:10 p.m. ET.
Barnes getting frustrated
Matt Barnes looked lost on the mound Thursday night, when he threw 27 pitches, just nine for strikes while walking four batters and recording just one out against the White Sox.
It was the kind of outing that makes it easy to question why Barnes is on a big league roster, but the Red Sox aren’t giving up on their All-Star closer.
“I think yesterday he got frustrated with himself,” Cora said. “I talked to him a little bit today and his mechanics were way off. There was a lot of effort yesterday and he became a thrower, not a pitcher. You could see it, he was trying to snap his breaking ball and spin it as hard as possible and he tried to throw his fastball as hard as possible and he was all over the place. It was a ball from the get-go.”
Cora said he thought Barnes had good stuff because he was touching 96 mph on the radar gun, but catcher Kevin Plawecki told him otherwise.
The Sox believe it’s a mechanical issue for Barnes, who was named to the American League All-Star team for the first time in his career last year and then signed a two-year contract extension worth at least $18.75 million. He faded down the stretch and hasn’t looked right since, though Cora insisted that Barnes is healthy.
“It’s been a struggle and he’ll admit it,” Cora said. “We’ve got a lot of people working with him and we’re not going to stop. I’ve been saying all along, he’s very important for us.”
