McAdam: Chris Sale performs rare face plant in Opening Day loss

SEATTLE -- Well, that wasn't how they drew this one up.

When Chris Sale is healthy -- and yes, fret not: he is healthy — he's close to automatic, as his .707 winning percentage with the Red Sox would suggest. And when he's making his first start of the season, the win probability soars even further. Before Thursday, Sale had been 7-for-7 in providing quality starts in his first outing of the season, with a 1.53 ERA.

Key phrase: Before Thursday.

This wasn't the Chris Sale to which we've become accustomed. And it had little to do with his velocity, which understandably, was not at its optimal point Thursday. Sale averaged a little more than 92 mph with his fastball, which is roughly the same as it was almost exactly a year ago for the 2018 opener. On that occasion, Sale was his masterful self, yielding a solo run over seven innings against Tampa Bay.

No, this wasn't about how fast it was going as much as where it was going, and too often, Sale couldn't control that. He lacked his trademark command and the results showed it. Fastballs that were supposed to snake inside instead leaked back over the plate, or sat invitingly over the heart of the plate -- with predictable results.

After a dominant first inning in which he struck out the side -- sandwiched around a harmless error by Rafael Devers -- Sale wasn't himself in the second.

Mariners shortstop Tim Beckham came into Thursday 0-for-15 with nine strikeouts in his career against Sale, so when he drove a 1-and-2 pitch (!!) out to left, it raised a red flag. Later in the same inning, Domingo Santana sliced a soft double down the right field line, scoring two and nearly a third except for a deft bit of housekeeping by Christian Vazquez to slap a tag on baserunner Mitch Haniger.

It didn't get any better in the third when Edwin Encarnacion hammered a pitch to center to lead off the inning. Two batters later, after a walk, Beckham got him again.

The same hitter who had had difficulty putting the ball in play against Sale in the past had homered in consecutive at-bats in consecutive innings.

That's how you know this wasn't Sale's day.

"Couldn't keep the ball in the ballpark and the command was pretty bad,'' summarized Sale after the Mariners had dusted the Red Sox, 12-4 at T-Mobile Park.

And as Sale painstakingly noted, the fastball wasn't his only problem, but rather, the most obvious one.

"I hit a guy (Haniger) with a slider, too,'' said Sale, "and the changeup was flying out sometimes. It was all-around pretty bad.''

Sale would not hide behind any excuses. The Red Sox brought him along slowly during spring training, in recognition of his workload last October, and, not incidentally, his shoulder inflammation which limited him over the final two months of the 2018 regular season.

But they did the same thing last spring, too, and Sale was brilliant in his 2018 debut.

"I've done this enough,'' said Sale. "I should be able to go out there and get it done, no matter how many starts I've had or what kind of stuff I have that day. I expect a lot out of myself, a lot better than that. I feel like I should go out there and throw strikes. This is the big leagues, man. I don't feel like I need a whole lot of practice. Command's never really been a big issue of mine and it's frustrating when it becomes an issue.

"I should be able to throw the ball over the plate. That's my job and, like I said, today I wasn't able to.''

That kind of accountability is what endears Sale to his teammates and his manager. There are never any excuses, or qualifiers from him. There weren't any last year when he was coming back from his shoulder woes, and there weren't any Thursday when he couldn't execute the basics.

So after being slugged around by the Mariners, Sale sat and stewed in the clubhouse, then beat himself up some more as he recounted his night.

What bothered him wasn't just that he had poor command. It was that his teammates had staked him a 2-0 lead by the top of the second and by the bottom of the inning, Sale had handed that back and more to the Mariners. Then, it went from bad to worse with four more runs allowed in the bottom of the third.

"We set ourselves up nicely,'' said Sale, "and I really just deflated us with that. Three runs (in the second), hey, it's a one-run ballgame, anything can happen. Then, I go back out there and completely stink the place up. That's not what I needed to do.''

Sale is not one for rigorous video study, but an outing like Thursday's requires some level of diagnosis and study. He'll get that from pitching coach Dana LeVangie, then count the minutes until Tuesday in Oakland when he gets a second chance and an opportunity to flush this one from his system.

"Throw this one,'' said Sale, "in the trash can.''

Where it belongs.