Sale Out For Season After Fracturing Wrist In Bicycle Accident

Chris Sale will log only 5.2 innings of work in 2022. The slender lefty was lost for the remainder of this season after fracturing his right wrist in a bicycle accident last Saturday. Sale, who had been working his way back from a fractured left pinkie (sustained on July 17), had surgery on his wrist three days ago.

Sale has been plagued by injuries since mid-August 2019, several months after signing a 5/145 extension. He missed the shortened 2020 season and most the 2021 campaign recovering from TJ surgery. This year, he suffered a stress fracture in his right rib cage before spring training, as well as what MLB.com's Ian Browne called an "undisclosed non-baseball medical situation".

Sale, who has refused to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, had contracted SARS-CoV-2 at least twice. At the end of June, he said he'd figure out that "shit" later. (Well, his calendar is now pretty wide open if he wants to get crackin' and do his own research.)

Sale finally returned to the Red Sox on July 12, pitching five scoreless innings against the Rays and proclaming: "I'm not broken anymore. . . . It's definitely different this year." Five days later, Sale's left pinkie was crushed at Yankee Stadium by a line drive off Aaron Hicks's bat.

On Saturday, Sale had finished a throwing session at Boston College. "He took his bike out to go grab some lunch near his house and hit something going down a hill, flew off the bike," Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said. "You couldn't make this up, right?"

Over the last three seasons, Sale has pitched in only 11 games (48.1 innings). He has two more seasons on the extension he signed in March 2019. The Red Sox have a club option for 2025.

It's been a summer of injuries for the Red Sox -- who had been flying high six weeks ago. Even though Kike Hernandez, Garrett Whitlock, Nate Eovaldi, Christian Arroyo, and Matt Barnes had spent time on the Injured List in June, Boston won 20 of 26 games during the month and had the third-best record in the American League on July 1.

Since then, they have gone 11-25 and are currently 5 GB in the Wild Card race.

July was the exact opposite of June. The IL was crowded with visits from Rafael Devers, Trevor Story, Sale, Arroyo, Rich Hill, Michael Wacha, Tyler Danish, Matt Strahm, and Connor Seabold, as well as Josh Winckowski, who missed eight games for Covid-related reasons. Kevin Plawecki was placed on the Covid-related list for the second time this season. Christian Vazquez was traded.

As August began, Rob Refsnyder, Tanner Houck, and Brayan Bello were placed on the IL. And now Sale -- once again.