'Full go': Sale opens camp with bullpen session

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Here it was, the first day of Spring Training and Chris Sale was able to utter two words that had eluded him over and over the past three years.

“Full go,” said Sale.

Back in his heyday with the White Sox or even in his early years with the Red Sox, that would have been a pretty matter-of-fact thing for Sale to say.

Now? After three years in the breakdown lane following Tommy John surgery and then a series of freak injuries, those two words meant everything to Sale, who conducted a press conference after throwing a side session of approximately 35 pitches.

“I say that with confidence and with pride,” said Sale. “I took a long time to get here. It took a lot of work not only by myself but a lot of people around me, and I'm just very appreciative of them and the opportunity I have.”

When it came to Wednesday’s bullpen session, manager Alex Cora gave Sale the option of pitching on a mound where he could be measured by the Rapsodo pitching machine with all the bells and whistles and statistics or on the standard bullpen mounds where his teammates were throwing.

After three Spring Trainings of isolation, Sale jumped at the chance to take Option 2.

“I said [to Cora], ‘I've been treated special for long enough. I want to be one of the guys today.’ So it's nice, being in the mix of it, going through just being normal,” said Sale. “You know, having a workout, doing my running, having PFPs on a day, and bullpen days and not coming in to just get worked on. It’s fun.”

In other words, this is shaping up as a normal Spring Training for a pitcher who has lacked all forms of normalcy in his baseball routine since August of 2019, when his elbow started aching.

Sale spent 2021 fully rehabbing from Tommy John and even made 12 starts (including the postseason). It looked like a building block.

But then came 2022, a year which literally broke Sale. First there was the stress fracture in his right ribcage while working out during the lockout. Then came his brief return to the roster in July, when his left pinkie finger got drilled on a line drive by Aaron Hicks in the first inning of his second start. Sale, in disbelief, escorted himself off the mound at Yankee Stadium and showed Cora his dangling pinkie as he walked back to the clubhouse.

The plan was for him to come back late in the season, but Sale got in a bike accident in August and broke his right wrist.

How much misfortune could one pitcher have in such a short period of time, particularly one who had aced the competition for years?

“I mean, if you get to ‘18 you throw the last pitch of the World Series, show up the next Spring Training, sign a contract. What could go wrong, right?” said Sale. “And to answer that question, just about everything. So I know how quickly it can be gone. I had a good run. I mean, the floor just got pulled right out from under me.

“So [now I’m] just appreciating each day, appreciating each moment. Knowing what the big picture really looks like, and just appreciating what's in front of me on that given day.”

Wednesday wasn’t the day to speculate on how many innings Sale might pitch this season or how many games he might win, or project how long it will take him to regain a feel for his repertoire after missing so much time.

Instead, this was just a moment in time for Sale -- one in which he envisions being part of Boston’s starting rotation on Opening Day.

With two years left on his contract plus a club option of $20 million, Sale hopes to at last reward the Red Sox for the faith they placed in him with that five-year deal he signed prior to the 2019 season.

“I was given that to do a job and I haven't done that. And you guys know me enough by now to know that that has eaten me alive. So I wouldn't say I'm trying to live up to a dollar amount,” said Sale. “I'm just trying to live up to who I need to be and that's the guy that goes out there for 30-plus starts, 200 innings and wins games.”