Chris Sale will miss Opening Day for the third straight season.
Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom told reporters Wednesday the left-handed ace is dealing with a stress fracture in his right rib cage. “We’re talking weeks, not days before we can get a baseball back in his hand,” Bloom said.
Sale apparently suffered the injury while he was throwing live batting practice before the end of the MLB lockout.
“The build up shouldn’t be too long before we can get him back,” Bloom added.
After undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2020, Sale returned to the mound last August, where he posted a 5-1 record with 3.16 ERA in nine starts. Though he gave the Red Sox a needed boost, he faded down the stretch, allowing five runs in 7.2 innings over his final two starts.
His best outing of the postseason came in Game 5 of the ALCS, when he allowed two earned runs over 5.1 innings in a loss against the Astros. Overall, Sale posted an 8.00 ERA in three playoff starts.
Despite his late-season struggles, the Red Sox need Sale at the top of their rotation if they’re going to compete in MLB’s best division. The seven-time All-Star’s absence leaves a lot of pressure on Nathan Eovaldi.
On the positive side, Bloom says they expect Sale to fully recover. “The nice thing about this is, this is really just a question of time,” he said. “Everything else has been great. It’s a bone that needs to heal. We have to respect the time that takes.”
The Red Sox added depth to their rotation earlier this winter, signing Rich Hill and Michael Wacha to one-year deals. It looks they’re going to be needed.
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