The Red Sox announced this left-hander on Tuesday Chris Sale suffered a fracture of his right wrist “in a bicycle accident on Saturday 6 August”. The injury required surgery that will end Sale’s 2022 season. He is expected to be ready for the start of spring training.
It’s the latest setback in a mounting injury pile for Sale, who has only made 11 starts while playing under the five-year, $145 million contract extension he signed in March 2019. (The contract began with the 2020 season, although it was signed in 2019, as Sale was already under contract for season 19.) Since penning that contract, Sale has missed time with an elbow infection that eventually resulted in surgery of Tommy John, as well as a stress reaction in his rib cage and a fractured Pinkie Finger, which occurred at a comebacker earlier this summer. Overall, he only pitched 48 1/3 innings in the first three years of the contract in the regular season (plus an additional nine frames in the 2021 postseason).
A healthy sale is, of course, one of the sport’s most dominant talents. From 2012 to 2018, Sale made seven straight All-Star games and never finished sixth on the American League’s Cy Young voting. Along the way, he averaged a 2.91 ERA in 1,388 innings, averaging 30 starts and 198 frames per regular season (plus an additional 25 postseason innings with Boston). Sale walked in relieved and punched out Justin Turnerfuture teammate Enrique Hernandez and Manny Machado to end Boston’s 2018 World Series win over the Dodgers, capping the franchise’s fourth championship since the “curse-breaking” 2004 season.
There’s more to come.