Red Sox News: Chris Sale exits early after getting hit by line drive

Red Sox lose Chris Sale after liner hits southpaw

As if this weekend couldn’t get any worse for the Red Sox, it went and got worse. In his second start of the season, Chris Sale was already struggling against the Yankees when an Aaron Hicks line drive caught him in the hand and ended his day very early. Right after the ball struck the southpaw he pulled his glove off in pain and you could see the pinky finger on his throwing hand was definitely not where it was supposed to be.

The last few seasons have been hard enough for Sale with his seemingly constant battles to return from injury, and now we have a new chapter in the story. MassLive’s Chris Cotillo reported that the true damage is yet to be learned but the Red Sox should hopefully have some insight in the near future. With the All-Star break kicking off after today’s game it buys the team some time to let him heal but without knowing just how bad the injury is, it may be a moot point.

The southpaw had a smirk on his face but it surely wasn’t a happy one. It had that feeling of “Seriously, now this?” We all know the long path of injuries that Sale has been dealing with since 2018 and this is just another speed bump on the journey for the aging lefty. When healthy, he’s the best pitcher on this staff and one of the most effective in all of baseball, but those days have been few and far in between lately.

Boston has been beaten down during this stretch of the schedule that has seen them play 17 games in 17 days, 14 of which have been against the Rays and Yankees. If we look beyond the All-Star Break, they have Toronto coming to town for a three-game set which further pushes the gauntlet to 17 straight games against the AL East. Not great.

While the Sox charged back in June to dig themselves out of the gutter that was the beginning of the season, they’ve effectively jumped right back into the basement and are out of Wild Card contention. Getting Sale back from the IL was supposed to be one of the steps needed to continue striving toward October baseball, but that’s firmly in doubt now. Until we know if the finger is broken or merely just dislocated, we can’t expect to see him back anytime soon.

Not many teams have been bitten by the injury bug quite like the 2022 Red Sox. For the last few weeks, a majority of the starting rotation has been on the IL while they currently have 12 players dealing with injuries as of this afternoon. We’ve seen the returns of Nathan Eovaldi and Garrett Whitlock in addition to Sale recently which was supposed to give us some hope but today’s events take the wind right out of the sails.

The second half of the season isn’t much kinder to the Sox as they have plenty of dates scheduled with postseason-quality teams. It’s going to take a massive effort from both the team and front office to weather the storm and fight for one of the three Wild Card spots. Chaim Bloom needs to take a look at the roster and be honest with what he has and go out and get players that can fix those deficiencies.

Until we know how bad this injury is we can’t fully write of Sale in the second part of the campaign. If the Red Sox want to make any sort of run like they did last year then they’ll need him back and fully healthy. Hopefully, he won’t be out for too long and this starting rotation can get back to full strength. If it’s something that will see him miss the remainder of the season then I don’t know how positive we can be. Here’s to hoping that Chris will be alright and he’ll be back and healthy before we know it.

**Update**

Per Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe, Sale’s pinky is broken and he’ll be making his way back to the IL.

At this point, it’s impossible to tell how long it’ll take to heal, and then he has to go through the rehab process once again. As much as I hate to say it, it feels like we probably won’t be seeing him back on the mound in 2022. We could get lucky and he heals fast and is able to make an impact but if the team is nowhere near the postseason by that time I doubt they’d push the cause. Damn.