McAdam: Chris Sale, looking to avoid second-half breakdown, works to get stronger

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The frustrating thing was that everything was going so right.

In late July, Chris Sale had a minuscule (2.04) ERA. He had struck out 207 batters is just 141 innings. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was better than 6-to-1. Opposing hitters were batting a feeble .179 against him.

The Red Sox had taken great pains to preserve and protect Sale from the start of spring training. They delayed his first Grapefruit League start. They meticulously monitored his workload and plotted a reduced between-start routine.

Everything was accounted for. This time, there would be no drop-off in the final two months. This time, Sale would be at full strength for the stretch run and the postseason.

But after a commanding July 27 start against Minnesota in which Sale toyed with the Twins over six shutout innings -- three hits allowed, 10 strikeouts recorded -- Sale pitched only 17 innings the rest of the way, sidelined by what the Red Sox termed "mild shoulder inflammation.''

There were still hints of dominance. In his next start following a two-and-a-half week DL stint, he looked good as new, fanning 12 with just hit allowed over five innings in Baltimore. But he was soon back on the DL again and didn't resurface until Sept. 11.

Sale was not himself in the postseason. Opponents ran up his pitch count and his outings were shortened. His most memorable October outing didn't come as a starter, but rather, in pitching the final inning of the World Series-clinching win in Game 5, when he struck out the side against the Dodgers.

After the euphoria of the postseason and the attendant celebrations, Sale went back to work last winter. As a resident of nearby Naples, Fla., he's only 20 or so miles from Fenway South and took full advantage of the proximity, working to get stronger, bigger and, he hopes, more durable.

"It was mostly more work in the weight room,'' said Sale. "Mike (Roose, the team's strength and conditioning coach) and Brandon (Henry, assistant athletic trainer) were here, so I had weight-lifting, a shoulder program, running and a throwing schedule basically mapped out for me. Obviously, they've been doing this for a long time, so it was very easy to buy in and trust the process.

"Just being able to increase the output of what I'm doing in the weight room, coupled with doing the shoulder program three times per week, that was a lot of it. The (added weight) was mostly in my legs and my shoulder area. I feel like I have a sturdier base.''

Sale's physique is hardly typical for a power pitcher. Unlike, say, Roger Clemens or Max Scherzer, who are bigger and more muscular, Sale is the very definition of lanky. Standing at 6-6, he weighs just 180 pounds and his slinging delivery is hardly modeled after the "drop-and-drive'' mechanics exhibited by most hard-throwers.

Until last summer's shoulder problems developed, he had always been the durable sort, making 30 or more starts and pitching 200 or more innings in four of the previous five seasons.

Early in camp, he can already feel the benefits of his winter work.

"The strength is there,'' said Sale. "I might not throw every changeup where I want it, but I know that with time, that's going to come. You want the strength to be there, and then you can start dialing in the execution part of it. Last year, we had the execution part of it, but I was a little behind the eight-ball, obviously, later in the year with the strength part of it. Overall, I just feel better.''

The offseason provides a window for Sale to build up. With no starts to prepare for, he can push himself physically with plenty of time to recover.

"On the day before a (regular season) start,'' he said, "you don't want to crush yourself in the weight room. The games start stacking up, the travel starts stacking up. It's a balance you have to find.''

Oddly, for someone who is so thin, Sale finds that he actually puts on weight during the season. Late night, post-game food adds up, whereas he jokes that during spring training, he's on a more traditional schedule and asleep before 10 p.m.

"Everyone talks about the (lack of) weight,'' shrugs Sale with a chuckle. "To me, strength, flexibility and stability are more important. I don't care how much you weigh -- if you're strong in what you do and you're stable and you can repeat what you're doing, that's the name of the game. Would I like to be a little bit heavier? Yeah, but I'm not going to be sitting over a trash can, waiting for the next throw-up session trying to get there.''

The offseason (and spring training) is a time for Sale to build up. Think of his body as a vehicle: he stores up as much fuel as he can, knowing that, over the long, six-month regular season, his tank will slowly be depleted.

"I think, for us, the maintenance starts in the offseason,'' said Sale. "Where my base before may have been here (puts hand at chest level), I'm now starting here (puts hand head-high). You maintain more when you start with more, right? That's kind of our thought. 'Let's get to a higher threshold before the season starts, so that if you do come down a little bit, (it's not as drastic a drop-off). We have some things in place during the season so that we have a higher output later in the year.''

Looking back on his shoulder inflammation, Sale has no regrets about how he or the organization handled him.

"We did everything we could,'' he said ruefully. "But if you're driving down the road and you hit a pothole, you're going to get a flat tire. It was frustrating. I hold myself to very high standards, so not being able to pitch -- that sucked, especially in the dog days of the season. Those are the hardest days and that's when the guys need you the most and I wasn't there for them.''

By virtue of training at Fenway South all winter, Sale knows that, if nothing else, the training staff has voluminous data on him and in this era of information, that has to count for something.

"They know exactly what I've done,'' said Sale. "They know every rep I've taken, every amount of weight that I loaded, every day of shoulder program, every massage -- they know everything now. They have more information on me than they've ever had and I now have a system. I show up here on a daily basis, I grab my card and whatever it says, I go down the list. I think that just makes it easier for everyone to understand where we are and what we need to do.

"I can come in on a given day and say, 'OK, this is how I feel,' and they can say, 'Based on this, this and this, this is what we need to do today.' There's more information and more of a system than we've ever had.''

The data has been collected. The work has been done. Now, Sale just has to have enough gas in the tank to get to the finish line.