BALTIMORE -- The concern over Chris Sale seems to be over.
One start after turning in his best outing of the 2019 season Sale turned it up a notch.
The lefty spun an absolute gem against the Orioles at Camden Yards, giving up one run on three hits over eight innings. He punctuated the performance by striking out 14 and not walking a single batter.
And just for good measure, the seventh inning saw Sale come away with an immaculate inning -- nine pitches, nine strikes, three outs.
"That was cool," said Sale of the perfect frame. "Yeah, obviously saw Rick (Porcello) and Craig (Kimbrel) do it a couple of years ago. Had one other chance when I was in Chicago and I didn’t. So I knew, I got two outs, and I was like, keep throwing strikes. Either give up the hit or a foul ball or something. Don’t ball it. That’s cool. That’s something that’s interesting but I appreciate it."
"Amazing. Amazing," said Red Sox manager Alex Cora of Sale after his team's 12-inning, 2-1 win over the Orioles. "For everybody that was worried about velocity and all that, well, he went eight and he had a good slider. He located his fastball. In this business, you’ve got to be patient. We’ve been patient. The results, obviously, we don’t want to be playing .500 right now, but we’re playing .500 right now. it’s kind of ironic that we play Seattle Friday playing .500 baseball. We started the season in Seattle, that happened. I don’t want to say the season starts Friday, but, the season starts Friday."
9 pitches. 9 strikes. 3 outs.That's what we call, immaculate. pic.twitter.com/8jAlyE0T4V
— MLB (@MLB)
May 9, 2019 Documented immaculate innings in Red Sox history:Chris Sale – 5/8/19 at BAL (7th inn.)Rick Porcello – 8/9/17 at TB (5th inn.)Craig Kimbrel – 5/11/17 at MIL (9th inn.)Clay Buchholz – 8/16/12 at BAL (6th inn.)Pedro Martinez – 5/18/02 vs. SEA (1st inn.)
— Red Sox Notes (@SoxNotes)
May 9, 2019 Red Sox pitchers with 14+ strikeouts, 0 walks, and 3 or fewer hits allowed:Chris Sale – 5/8/19 at BALHideo Nomo – 5/25/01 vs. TORPedro Martinez – 5/12/00 at BALPedro Martinez – 9/10/99 at NYYRoger Clemens – 4/29/86 vs. SEA
— Red Sox Notes (@SoxNotes)
May 9, 2019 Sale, who carried a no-hitter through 5 2/3 innings, saw his fastball max out at 96.4 mph, averaging 93.3 mph.
He exited with the score tied at 1-1.
"Yeah, I mean, it’s hard not to," Sale said when asked if he was aware of the no-hit bid. "But at the same time, you’ve got a one-run game so you can’t really get caught up in that kind of stuff. Sandy was right on point from the get-go. Just throwing down all the right fingers and really just made one big mistake and that was obviously the changeup to (Trey) Mancini, I just kind of cut it off a little bit but other than that, we were dialed in."
