FORT MYERS, Fla. — Even before the first Grapefruit League game is played, the Red Sox find themselves with a big loss.
Chris Sale, their No. 1 starter and the highest-paid player on the team, suffered a stress fracture of his right rib cage last month, and will not be ready for Opening Day -- and for some time after that. Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said Sale won't be able to so much as throw for "several weeks.''
Sale suffered the injury while throwing live batting practice on Feb. 24 at nearby Florida Gulf Coast University, his alma mater. Thanks to the lockout, which began on Dec. 2 and forbade any contract between major league players and their teams, Sale couldn't even inform Red Sox management of the injury until last week, when a new CBA was agreed upon.
"We don't have a timetable (for his return) right now,'' said Bloom. "He's not throwing, basically, at this point. We're talking weeks, not days, before we can get a baseball back in his hands. He's doing a lot better now than when he first came in. But we don't know. We just know he's not going to be ready for the start of the weeks. We're talking weeks before he can throw again. We have to build him up. He was already pretty far along before this happened, so the buildup shouldn't be too long when we're able to get him back. But we don't know when that will be.''
Having spent the winter building up arm strength, Sale now frustratingly faces the notion of opening a third straight season on the IL.
"I put in a lot of work to prepare myself for this moment,'' said Sale. "I feel like I built a bad-ass race car and it broke down before the race started. Back in the garage, trying to fix it up.
The news leaves a gaping hole at the top of the Boston rotation, which already had suffered the free-agent loss of lefty Eduardo Rodriguez. For now, the rotation will be headed by Nathan Eovaldi, followed by Nick Pivetta and two free-agent signings: Rich Hill and Michael Wacha. A host of other candidates for the fifth spot include Tanner Houck, Garrett Whitlock, Connor Seabold and Kutter Crawford.
The free-agent starter market is mostly picked over at this point, though a few possibilities -- Zack Greinke, Tyler Anderson and Michael Pineda -- remain available.
The setback comes as Sale was under the belief that he was fully healthy for the first time in several springs, having dealt with shoulder woes and undergone Tommy John surgery in March of 2020. He returned to the Sox last August after a layoff of almost exactly two years and was 5-1 with a 3.16 ERA over nine regular-season starts.
"I don't have any idea,'' said Sale when asked about a recovery timetable. "I know bones typically take, what, six to eight weeks to heal. That's a pretty universal timeline. Outside of that, I don't know anything. I'm like a dog on a chain right now; I can't wait to get off this thing. The last couple of years have sucked. I've run unto some unlucky circumstances, with my arm and my neck and this. But, what can you do?
"I'm just waiting for the next doctor's appointment to get here, when they tell me, 'Hey, you got this going on,' or 'You've got this going on.' ''
Despite the time lost to injury since 2018, Sale said he's not worried about his durability or his chance of regaining his role as a dependable starter.
"With the arm stuff, that bothered me a lot,'' said Sale. "I looked at that as a failure for me. Knowing what I know now, injuries happen. There's not much you can do. This is a freak incident. Who would've known? I've never dealt with anything like this, I've never even thought about it. Rib injuries for a pitcher are kind of a freak thing. If it was something more or something specific, I would probably be worried about those things.
"But the way my body was feeling before all this happened, I was throwing off a mound a lot better than I had been at that time in previous years. Yeah, I had a little bit more to prove coming into this spring training. I wanted to be stronger, I wanted to be ready. That's obviously not the case now ... Does it suck? Yes. Was I discouraged? Absolutely. Pissed off? One hundred percent. But all that being said, none of those feelings, none of those emotions, none of that wasted energy is going to help me help this. I've got work to do. I've been behind much bigger hurdles.''
The injury is sure to re-ignite controversy surrounding the extension given to Sale prior to the start of the 2019 season. With a year remaining on his existing contract, the Sox gave Sale a five-year $145 million deal, the biggest contract given to a pitcher in franchise history.
Sale then proceeded to have his worst season in 2019, going 6-11 with a 4.40 ERA before experiencing pain in his elbow which ended his season in August. The Sox believed some stem cell injections would treat the issue, and for a time, it appeared as Sale was going to return in 2020 without the need for a surgical procedure.
But he soon experienced pain in the elbow during a live BP session, and at the end of March, underwent Tommy John surgery.
Sale was paid a total of $60 million between 2020 and 2021 and gave the Sox just nine regular-season starts. He's due to be paid another $30 million this year and is scheduled to make $27.5 million in both 2023 and 2024 with a club option of $20 million in 2025. Some of the money paid to Sale is deferred, reducing, at least somewhat, the present-day value.
Still, the AAV of his deal ($29 million) is the fifth-highest in the game this season for a starting pitcher.