Chris Sale can't guarantee what results he's going to deliver, but he can promise this: he won't be limited physically when he takes the mound in Game 1 of the ALDS Friday night. And Sale, who has dealt with mild inflammation in his left shoulder since late July, will offer no excuses.
"I'm ready to go,'' said Sale. "I'm at the point where you hand me the ball, I go pitch and I stop pitching when you take it out my hand. That's been my philosophy for the last couple of years, anyway -- just put my head down and keep running.''
"He's a full go,'' said Alex Cora of his ace. "Just go out there and perform. He's in a good place. He's ready to roll. I think he's very excited to start Game 1, and we're excited too.''
As he ramped back up after his injury scare, Sale saw his velocity dip, and in his last outing, last week against Baltimore, he averaged just over 90 mph, the lowest velocity of his career. But Sale isn't obsessing about that, either.
"If I take the mound, I expect to win,'' he said. ''I don't care what I have on a given day. I should be able to find a way with whatever I have. Sometimes you go out there and you have your best, sometimes you don't. This is sports. This is baseball. You have to find a way with whatever you have on any given day and roll with it. So I take the ball (Friday) and I expect to win.''
Sale's postseason debut did not go well last October. In the first inning, he gave up two homers and the Sox were never in the game. He was done after five innings, allowing seven runs on nine hits.
"It happened,'' acknowledged Sale. "I'm not going to run away from it. I don't think that's the right thing to do. Obviously, I look back and I realize the mistakes I made and, like I said, try to learn from it. I'm not going to hide from it. It is what it is. You can Google it now, tomorrow, and 100 years from now and it's going to be there. I own it; I accept it. And like I said, I'm going to be better. I'm going to go do everything I can to be better. That's all I can do.''
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