Sale avoids surgery for now
Sox may end up regretting not pushing for Tommy John sooner
FORT MYERS — Only time will tell if the Red Sox and Chris Sale are making the right decision.
Sale will avoid Tommy John surgery for now, an industry source confirmed to the Herald on Wednesday.
The news was first reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal on Wednesday afternoon, about 20 minutes after Red Sox interim manager Ron Roenicke said the team was still awaiting a third opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles and wanted to discuss the findings with Sale.
The team is expected to address the findings of the MRI on Thursday morning.
“We need to get this right,” Roenicke said Wednesday.
Sale originally felt elbow soreness on Monday, one day after throwing 15 pitches in his first live batting practice session of spring training.
As of Wednesday there was “no pain,” Roenicke said.
But this isn’t the first time Sale has dealt with elbow issues. He experienced inflammation in his elbow last August, when Dr. James Andrews recommended a plateletrich plasma injection that ended Sale’s season after just 25 starts.
Sale was thought to be completely over the elbow issues entering spring training. After one session against live hitters, the pain returned.
We’ll find out Thursday what the Sox plan to do to get Sale healthy, but there has to be some concern that the issues aren’t going to go away with rest and rehab, or with another PRP injection, or with a minor surgery that doesn’t repair the ulnar collateral ligament.
The decision should ultimately come down to Sale. It’s his elbow. It’s his future. It’s his Hall of Fame career on the line.
But if the Sox have a say in the matter (they’re paying him $145 million over the next five years), one has to wonder if they would prefer him to have Tommy John surgery sooner than later.
Be honest for a second: Where is this team going in 2020?
Alex Cora was fired. Mookie Betts and David Price were traded. Alex Verdugo is still recovering from a back injury.
The Yankees loaded up. The Blue Jays got better. The Rays are still very good.
And the Red Sox, 19 games worse than the Yankees a year ago, didn’t add a single All-Star this off-season.
Even after the Betts trade, we could debate whether or not the Sox had a reasonable chance to compete for a Wild Card spot. I’ve argued that they did not. The American League isn’t nearly the pushover it was a year ago. The
Jays, White Sox, Angels and Rangers got significantly better. The Yankees, Rays, Astros, Twins, A’s and Indians are still good.
There aren’t as many easy wins and the Red Sox don’t have the innings to survive.
That was before Sale got hurt. Maybe Sale is one of those guys who can rest for a little while now and return to his old self mid-season. The Red Sox have to hope that’s the case.
But it’s hard not to think that with his work ethic and dedication, he could speed up the Tommy John recovery timetable to 11 or 12 months, heal quickly, work hard to build up shoulder strength the way John Lackey (and others) did and come back even better early in the 2021 season.
Tommy John threw 2,000 innings and never missed a start in 14 years after having the surgery in 1974.
Six years ago, I asked him why pitchers often look better after surgery. He said that because pitchers can’t throw during the recovery process, they must instead spend most of their focus rebuilding the shoulder.
“You worked out, you’re throwing for other things, your arm is in great shape, your shoulder is in great shape, your legs are in good shape; that is what makes you throw harder,” he said.
Former Red Sox pitching coach Juan Nieves used to call the shoulder the “engine” of the car. The elbow is the tire. It’s easier to change a tire.
Sale had shoulder issues at the end of 2018 that were supposedly a non-factor entering 2019. Then he made just two spring training appearances and just 25 starts during the year.
A long layoff would give him a chance to rebuild shoulder strength and refresh the engine.
Instead, the Sox have a different plan that we’ll find out today.
It goes without saying that we don’t know the MRI results. The doctors do. And they know much better than us.
But given the Sox sent the results to three different sets of medical experts, the decision not to have surgery now will certainly be questioned if Sale ends up with a sore elbow again in 2020.
Or worse, in 2021.