SALE MAY BE STEAL FOR RED SOX
Joining Porcello, Price sure to put batters on edge
Chris Sale made the short drive Tuesday morning from his home to his new job, a Clif Bar and coffee at his side, and figured he knew exactly what to expect.
Even after he was the centerpiece of the major leagues’ biggest trade of the winter, it’s still just baseball, and, as he noted, ballplayers are such creatures of habit that the biggest differentiator is often which guys prefer golf to video games, cards to cribbage.
Yet once Sale arrived at JetBlue Park, sat at his locker stall adjacent to a pair of Cy Young Award winners and heard Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell deliver his first group address of 2017, he realized what he was embarking upon.
“John was saying we had a very talented team, and I start to look around, see the names on the lockers, look at what those guys have done and where they’ve been, and it’s impressive,” Sale said Tuesday afternoon. “When you have guys of that caliber, it raises the intensity.”
The Red Sox are expecting the same from Sale.
“You’re not going to win every game, but what we’re throwing out there this year is going to look good every night.” Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel
As spring training opened with the first workout for pitchers and catchers, the Red Sox didn’t conceal the giddiness of seeing the 6-6, 180-pound left-hander climb a row of mounds and fire fastballs alongside Rick Porcello — the reigning American League Cy Young winner — and David Price, who has one Cy Young and two runner-up finishes on his résumé.
The joy was partially visceral — “He in our uniform is the most encouraging and exciting thing, that he’s wearing a Red Sox uniform,” Farrell said — but the greater joy lies in simple mathematics.
Start with the dominance — five seasons of at least 200 strikeouts for Price and four for Sale, who was acquired from the Chicago White Sox for a package headed by top prospect Yoan Moncada.
Continue with the durability: Price has averaged 218 innings pitched over the last seven seasons, Sale 203 innings over the last five years. Porcello reached a career-high 223 innings in his 22win Cy Young breakout.
And mix in the simplest equation of all — these men will take the ball three out of five games, putting Boston in prime position to win six out of 10 games, which gets almost anyone in the playoffs.
If you dare to dream a bit more, Porcello, Price and Sale would start 75% of Boston’s playoff games.
And this all assumes nothing from the highly capable men bidding for the fourth and fifth starter roles, led by lefties Drew Pomeranz and Eduardo Rodriguez.
Do the math. The Red Sox certainly have.
“It makes a huge difference — knowing you can go out three out of five days and know you’re going to get a win,” said outfielder Mookie Betts, the AL MVP runner-up. “And the other guys are good starting pitchers.”
The Red Sox figure the Sale effect won’t just be on the nights he pitches. Should their terrifying trio pitch to their track records, it will automatically take a significant burden off a bullpen led by All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel and bolstered by new setup man Tyler Thornburg.
Thornburg — who has a 1.19 career WHIP (walks plus hits allowed per inning pitched) — was the Red Sox’s big acquisition for a few hours on the afternoon of Dec. 6. Farrell and club President Dave Dombrowski told him they weren’t quite done. Thornburg went online a few hours later and couldn’t believe Sale was his teammate.
“When I saw that, it was kind of a mind-blowing situation, just the idea of the amount of starters we have,” Thornburg said Tuesday. “From all the starters to the bullpen, I’m trying to find, exactly, a weak spot. It doesn’t seem like there is one.”
Said Kimbrel, “Obviously, you’re not going to win every game, but what we’re throwing out there this year is going to look good every night.”
Kimbrel has seen this act before. He was the closer for the Atlanta Braves in 2011, when they were chasing a Philadelphia Phillies squad that added Cliff Lee to the dominant duo of Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels.
It was, at times, a demoralizing task.
“Going into a three-game series, there was a good chance if we didn’t catch all three, we’d catch two of them. That made a big difference,” Kimbrel told USA TODAY Sports. “You want guys to have a positive attitude going into it but — knowing that you’re facing a No. 1 three nights in a row, that says a lot.”
They lived up to the billing: Halladay, Hamels and Lee com- bined to go 50-23 with a 2.51 ERA. They gobbled up 6821⁄ in3 nings — and the Phillies won 102 games.
But not the World Series. Philadelphia lost a five-game division series thriller to the St. Louis Cardinals, Chris Carpenter besting Halladay in an epic clincher.
Sale, 27, has never pitched in the playoffs.
As a summer of promise on Chicago’s South Side faded into another grim losing season, Sale lost it. His much-celebrated pregame scissoring of what he deemed uncomfortable throwback jerseys earned him a trip home from White Sox management July 23 — and burnished his reputation as a player with an edge.
Now, he’ll step into a Boston spotlight that has consumed some players and certainly affected others. No, Sale doesn’t anticipate playing haberdasher at Fenway Park.
He does, however, stop just short of calling his protest an act of total regret.
“It all goes into the passion I have for playing the game,” Sale said. “Nobody’s perfect. You’re going to make mistakes.
“It was … something I learned from. I’ll leave it at that. Moving forward, hopefully, it’s made me a better person.”
And it’s not exactly an episode the Red Sox are stressing over. “Between the lines,” Farrell said, “he brings an edge with him that will fit in very well here.”
Sale is quick to note that the gaunt, fiery figure he cuts on the mound — leading to the occasional misunderstanding with opponents — is nothing like his off-field persona.
Now a father of two sons — Brayson turned 2 months Tuesday — Sale attended Florida Gulf Coast University here and still lives in the area. He says his competitive nature “sometimes gets the best of me” and is hopeful he can improve his level of focus.
The Red Sox aren’t terribly concerned, as long as he maintains his 10.1 strikeout per nine innings rate, his 1.07 WHIP and his utter dominance. They express few concerns the Boston market will impede his performance and chafe some at the notion Price had a lackluster Red Sox debut after signing a $217 million deal.
Price’s ERA jumped to a career-worst 3.99, but he led the AL in innings (230) and finished fourth with 228 strikeouts.
“Seventeen wins, led the league in innings pitched. That’s pretty damn good,” Porcello mused.
Said Price, “I know I can pitch here. It’s probably the earliest I’ve had the itch to get back to a season. I’m very excited for this year.”
He’ll be backed by an offense that led the major leagues in runs and a core of position players that, outside of 33-year-old Dustin Pedroia, is largely in its prime.
Yet the optimism will come from the mound, where the sight of a 6-6 lefty is enough to turn thoughts toward October.
“That’s how this is all set up — for the playoffs,” Kimbrel said. “But right now … we’re still in spring training. We still have a team to put together. But you have seen it time and again throughout the game — you have a solid staff like that, it just feeds throughout the entire team.”