Chris Sale and Red Sox fans can breathe a sigh of relief.
With two outs in the first inning of his final Grapefruit League outing on Saturday, the left-hander took a screaming line-drive off the bat of Houston's J.D. Davis off his left hip. Sale immediately went to the ground for a few seconds before bouncing up. After the trainers and manager Alex Cora visited him on the mound, he was removed from the game.
The Red Sox are calling it a hip contusion.
Speaking to reporters in the clubhouse afterwards, Sale explained what happened and said it looked a lot worse than it was. (See video below.)
"So when it first hit me it hit me like in the hip, it kind the nerve, the IT [band>, so it like shot all the way down to my foot and that's what kind of made me worry," Sale said to reporters. "That's what I was telling them when I was out there. I was like give me a minute, it'll come back, I'll be fine. They didn't want to wait. So I came in here, got it evaluated, looked at it, figured out it's not thing serious, just a bruise. Flush it out and we'll be good."
Sale said he will have precautionary X-rays, but he's on track to start Thursday on Opening Day in Tampa.
"I don't see anything lingering from this," he said. "It looked a lot worse than it actually is."
The left-hander did say he and the team will need to work something out over the next few days to get his arm strength to where it needs to be, as he was scheduled to pitch six innings Saturday.
Better look pic.twitter.com/zjpsEtd42n
— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) March 24, 2018
