Chris Sale fractures wrist in bicycle crash, out for season
Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Chris Sale suffered a right wrist fracture Saturday during a bicycle accident and underwent surgery, the team announced Tuesday morning.
The surgery will cause him to miss the remainder of the 2022 season, though he is expected to be ready for the start of the 2023 season.
This comes mere days after Sale threw for the first time since fracturing his left pinkie that he suffered in a 13-2 loss to the New York Yankees three weeks ago on July 17. Sale was struck with an Aaron Hicks 107 mph line drive comebacker in the first inning, immediately leaving the game.
He’s only started two games this season after coming off the 60-day IL due to a rib fracture suffered in spring. He allowed only two earned runs across 5.2 innings.
Sale, who signed a five-year, $145 million extension with the Red Sox in March 2019, has only made 11 starts since the start of 2020 after missing the entire COVID-shortened 2020 season and most of the 2021 with Tommy John Surgery in his throwing elbow. Over those 11 starts, he’s pitched to a 3.17 ERA (149 ERA+) and a 3.54 FIP over 48.1 frames.
This is yet another blow to a Boston rotation that’s been unhealthy and inconsistent for a majority of the season, having to rely on big innings from rookies Kutter Crawford and Josh Winckowski with a handful of appearances from top pitching prospect Brayan Bello.
Before the recent injury history, Sale was one of the top pitchers in the sport. Over his first 10 seasons (2010-19), Sale racked up the fourth-highest fWAR as a starter (42.8), posting a 3.06 ERA, 2.90 FIP, a 30.8 strikeout rate with a .217 batting average allowed — each of which are top-3 marks over that span (min. 1500 innings) — in 232 starts. He finished top-five in the AL CY Young voting in six straight seasons.
I’m not sure he’ll ever return to “Prime Sale” per say, but this yet another blow that makes the extension — which looked excellent at the time — appear not-so-excellent in the present.
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