The Bad Luck Is Piling Up For Red Sox Ace Chris Sale … But He Still Has A Path To The Hall Of Fame

There is, quite obviously, never a good time for a player to suffer a season-altering injury. But even by those standards, the broken finger Chris Sale suffered when he was hit by a comebacker Sunday afternoon seemed to arrive at a particularly cruel juncture.

Sale, making his second start of the season, is expected to miss at least a month after he needed surgery to repair his left index finger, which was broken when it was hit by a 106.7 mph off the bat of Aaron Hicks. The left-hander made the universal “I’m done” motion and was walking off the mound, looking at the injured finger, before the ball Hicks hit even finished rolling into right field.

Even if Sale makes it back as quickly as he hopes, the longtime ace is staring at the reality of a third straight lost season further clouding a career that once seemed destined to earn Sale a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“It’s par for the course, honestly,” Sale told reporters in a profanely candid postgame interview Sunday. “Think about it. Just think about my timeline. It has just been (stuff) after (stuff) after (stuff). Just more (stuff) to deal with.”

Sale getting hurt two days before the All-Star Game — and almost a week to the minute before the Hall of Fame Class of 2022, featuring Red Sox icon David Ortiz, is slated to be officially inducted at the Clark Sports Center — served as a sobering reminder of how his recent misfortunes have rendered uncertain both his short-term ability to pitch for the Red Sox, with whom he is signed through 2024 with a vesting option for 2025, and his long-term legacy.

Indeed, the timeline was a lot more pleasant and the (stuff) decidedly easier to deal with for Sale from 2012 through 2018, a span in which he made the AL All-Star team and placed in the AL Cy Young balloting every season.

Only one pitcher — Hall of Famer Juan Marichal from 1962 through 1969 — earned more consecutive bids to the All-Star Game. And while Sale has yet to win the Cy Young, only Hall of Famer Greg Maddux (1992 through 1998) and Hall of Fame locks Clayton Kershaw (2011 through 2017) and Max Scherzer (2013 through 2019) have matched Sale by earning Cy Young votes in seven straight seasons.

Even without an award on his mantle, Sale appeared to be on the fast track to Cooperstown at the end of an injury-shortened 2018, when a left shoulder ailment limited him to 17 regular season innings after Aug. 1 and 15 1/3 innings in the playoffs, when he recorded the final three outs of the Red Sox’s World Series-clinching win over the Dodgers.

But Sale had the worst season of his career in 2019, when he went 6-11 with a 4.40 ERA while making just 25 starts due to left elbow inflammation. He underwent Tommy John surgery in March 2020, shortly after the pandemic shut down sports, and has thrown just 48 1/3 innings over 11 starts since returning to the Red Sox last Aug. 14. He didn’t debut this season until July 12 due to a rib injury.

With 114 wins and 2,064 strikeouts in 323 games (243 starts) and 1,678 innings pitched, Sale is far short of the longtime standards for Hall of Fame starters. Among starters to debut after World War II, only Sandy Koufax (165 wins) has made the Hall of Fame with fewer than 200 wins, though Dennis Eckersley had 151 of his 197 wins before becoming a shutdown closer at age 32.

But as anyone who has watched the “evolution” of starting pitching in the 21st century, it’s impossible to compare today’s starters to those from earlier eras. Per Baseball-Reference, Sale’s WARAR
of 45.6 is fifth-highest among active pitchers, behind only the Cooperstown-bound Justin Verlander, Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Scherzer. Only Adam Wainwright (42.6 WAR) and Jacob deGrom (39.7 WAR), both of whom have fascinating Hall of Fame cases of their own, are within shouting distance of Sale. And Wainwright is 40 years old while deGrom hasn’t pitched in 54 weeks (and counting) due to elbow and shoulder injuries.

In addition, after deGrom, there are just seven pitchers with at least 30.0 WAR — only two of whom, Madison Bumgarner (34.7) and Gerrit Cole (33.1) are 33 years old or younger. The rest are a trio of 36-year-olds in David Price, Johnny Cueto and Corey Kluber as well as Stephen Strasburg, who turns 34 today but has pitched just 31 1/3 innings since the start of the 2020 season.

During the 1992 season, there were six active pitchers with at least 45.0 in WAR — Hall of Famers Bert Blyleven, Nolan Ryan and Eckersley, plus Roger Clemens, who would be in Cooperstown if not for his links to steroid use, as well as Dave Stieb and Frank Tanana, both of whom went one-and-done on the BBWAA ballot — and another 17 whose WAR fell in between 30 and 45.

Of those 17, only the polarizing Jack Morris — who had 44.9 WAR through 1992 but finished at 43.5 after posting a 5.91 ERA in his final two seasons — is in the Hall of Fame.

By these standards, Sale has already cemented his status as one of the best pitchers of his generation and one worthy of Cooperstown consideration. But even assuming an electorate possessing a more modern definition of a Hall of Fame starter, how much more does Sale have to do to get back on the fast track?

If three healthy seasons at his current level enough? With a 3.17 ERA (an ERA+ of 148, or 48 percent better than the league average) and 10.6 strikeouts per nine innings in his 11 starts since 2021, Sale has been almost as efficient, albeit in much more limited action, as he was before his meteoric rise was interrupted.

Or maybe Sale could make an Eckersley-like transition into a second act as a dominant closer deep into his 30s. Sale’s fastball is still being clocked in the mid-90s and between the filthy stuff, the deception in the delivery and Sale’s, uhh, decidedly amped mound persona, it’s easy enough to envision him thriving as a reliever.

The path back to immortality might be shorter than Sale realizes — and even if he never regains the form he displayed prior to 2018, it didn’t take Sale long to realize a potentially Quixotic pursuit of who he used to be is better than most alternatives.

“Everyone gets knocked down,” Sale said. “How do you get back up? It’s where I’m at again.

“If I want to sit here and cry about a broken finger and boo-hoo, poor me, I can do it. It’s just not fair to everyone in here and it’s not fair to people in the world, honestly.”