Sale’s sliders: Delicious
Ace eats up Rangers with dominant pitch
ARLINGTON, Texas — Chris Sale possesses a fastball that can blow by opposing hitters as it consistently reaches the high 90s.
But when his slider is cooking, the Red Sox ace is at his best.
Sale’s slider has been a work in progress this season, but over his last two starts, it’s where he’s wanted it to be. The lefty struck out a season-high 12, nine of which he put away with his slider, as he dominated the Rangers with overpowering stuff in the Red Sox’ 6-1 victory yesterday at Globe Life Park.
The Red Sox are now 25-9 — the best record in baseball — and they’re one game ahead of the Yankees as they head into their series in the Bronx that starts tomorrow.
“He’s been working in between starts to get that slider and that’s very important and you saw that (yesterday),” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said.
Sale started to turn a corner with the slider in his last outing vs. Kansas City, but continued to work on it. He looked at video with pitching coach Dana LeVangie and assistant pitching coach Brian Bannister, and diagnosed some adjustments to make, which included delivery and release point.
“It’s probably been the main concern,” Sale said of the slider. “Like I said early on it wasn’t where we wanted it to be. With Dana and Banny looking at some video, we actually looked at a lot of video and kind of got back to where we wanted to be with stiff front side and release point. A couple of other things, couple of other cues that get me where I needed to be.
“Without them I’d probably still be lost.”
The homework clearly paid dividends yesterday.
“It definitely was a huge impact, swing and misses at it,” LeVangie said. “The full deception of the pitch with depth rather than lateral break. You want depth to the ball, lateral stays on bat path, so they go swing at it and miss it underneath the swing, so really good. …
“We watched video and got back into his delivery, his right delivery. It allows him to have freedom to throw the slider, and it’s paying off.”
Sale gave up one run, a solo homer to Ryan Rua in the seventh inning, but he was otherwise masterful. He struck out the side in the first inning, with each out pitch coming via the slider, and that set the tone for the afternoon.
The lefty finished with a season-high 23 swinging strikes, with 12 of those coming on the slider, and that helped the rest of his pitch arsenal as he kept Rangers batters off-balance.
“When you have that going, your other pitches play a lot better off of that, especially with Sandy (Leon) being able to recognize that, too,” Sale said. “So different days bring you different things sometimes, but when you’re feeling good and your catcher knows what’s going on, he can guide you through that, it works well.”
The six runs were more than enough for the lefty. Leon provided his first home run of the season, a three-run homer in the sixth inning off former Sox pitcher Doug Fister, and J.D. Martinez produced his eighth homer of the season in the seventh.
The Sox have now homered in each of their last seven games, and have 16 in that span.