BOSTON — Chris Sale has already had a rough year. It somehow got even worse this weekend.
The Red Sox left-hander — while rehabbing from one freak injury — suffered another on Saturday, when he fractured his right wrist in a bicycling accident. Sale had successful surgery on Monday, but his 2022 season is over.
The hits keep on coming for Sale, who experienced a series of injuries that almost defied belief in 2022. He fractured his right rib cage while pitching in February, which forced him to miss the first four months of the season. Then, in his second start back on July 17, he fractured his left pinky finger after he was hit by a line drive. Now this.
“You couldn’t make this up, right?” Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said. “We need to dispatch some people to go find whoever has the Chris Sale voodoo doll and recover it. …
“It stinks. It’s really unfortunate. We’re relieved this wasn’t worse. Obviously it was a pretty rough spill and very glad this wasn’t worse. It’s been such a run of bad luck for him and obviously for us.”
Bloom said Sale had just finished a throwing session at Boston College — Fenway Park wasn’t available because of the concerts there this weekend — when the accident happened on Saturday afternoon. Sale returned home and took his bike out to grab some lunch nearby, hit something while going down a hill and went flying off the bike.
Sale reached out to Red Sox trainer Brad Pearson, who came over to tend to him.
“Fortunately (the wrist) was the only thing really requiring medical attention,” Bloom said. “He’s pretty beat up as you could imagine flying off a bike, I know he was going down a hill. I don’t know if anybody knows exactly what he hit. There wasn’t any other person or vehicle involved. He must have hit something and fallen off the bike.
“So he’s pretty beat up and we did a full workup to make sure everything else was OK and all those bumps and bruises are going to heal but the wrist was broken badly enough that it needed surgery.”
Before the accident, there was confidence that Sale would return this season after the pinky injury he suffered in July — a belief aided by Saturday’s session at BC.
“I think he was going to,” Bloom said. “Actually, when Brad was calling to tell me about the biking accident he said, ‘You should’ve seen him throw at BC. He looked great.’ Obviously with the pinky going to be involved, the change-up was probably going to be the last thing to come into play. But just in terms of picking up a baseball and letting it go confidently, he was looking good.
“We obviously had not gotten to the point of putting a timetable on it, but we all felt pretty good that he was going to come back and pitch this season.”
But now it’s on to 2023 for Sale, who’s expected to be ready for the start of spring training — barring anything else happening.
Since he signed a five-year, $145 million extension in 2019, Sale has spent significantly more time rehabbing from injuries than being on the field. Tommy John surgery kept him out for all of 2020 and most of 2021 before this year’s trifecta of inexplicable injuries. Including the playoffs, Sale has made just 14 starts and thrown 57 1/3 innings over the last three years — the first three seasons of his five-year extension.
Bloom said the Red Sox will be responsible with how they build the rotation around Sale moving forward, but despite all these injuries, they’re still hoping for the lefty’s best starting next season.
“As with everything that’s happened, you look forward, and he should be fine,” Bloom said. “I know we keep saying that and things keep happening. This is just an incredibly bizarre run of events. He should be full go next spring. We obviously need to think through what that means as far as planning out a full season with him not having carried very much of a workload the last few years. But other than that, there’s no reason not to expect him to be back and be the Chris Sale that we know.”
