Sale finds his groove in Sox' 4-2 win over Brewers

MILWAUKEE - The season is still in the early stages, but it has already been a long grind for Chris Sale.

The White Sox' ace starter has seemingly spent more time recovering from a fractured foot and the fallout from an April 23 brawl against the Royals instead of doing what he does best: get hitters out.

At Miller Park Tuesday night, Sale was back in the swing.

"It's hard to believe he had a 5-something ERA coming into the game," Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. "I had never seen him in person but with every one of our hitters, you looked up and it felt like the count was 0-2. He just did a nice job."

Yes, he did.

In the Sox' 4-2 win over Milwaukee, Sale (3-1) pitched 8 innings and allowed 2 runs on 3 hits. He also had 11 strikeouts and just 1 walk.

In his prior two starts, Sale pitched a combined 8⅓ innings and allowed 13 earned runs on 16 hits and 7 walks.

"He's trying to do too much," White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper said. "When you see his velocity up a mile and a half, he's trying to strike everybody out with strike one."

Sale did just the right amount against the Brewers, and the return of his nasty slider was a very encouraging sign for the Sox.

"Obviously, as a starter you want to get as far into the game as you can, especially after having a couple of really bad ones and leaving my guys out to dry," Sale said after lowering his ERA from 5.93 to 5.09. "You want to have a start like this after a couple of bad ones."

Sale gave up a leadoff triple to Jean Segura in the first inning and he came home on Ryan Braun's groundout.

Sale also allowed a solo home run to Elian Herrera in the fifth, but the Sox' offense snapped a 2-2 tie on Alexei Ramirez's sacrifice fly in the eighth inning and Jose Abreu's RBI single in the ninth.

"I'm not sure what our record is or how many games we played, but you know we keep playing games like this, we are going to be in a good spot," Sale said. "It's early. We are not winning or losing today or tomorrow or even the next day. Just keep coming in and plugging along and playing good baseball and picking each other up and see where it takes us."

If Sale completely shakes off all of the early distractions and continues pitching like he did against Milwaukee, the White Sox could very well emerge from a skiddish start.

"All in all a good job, a good job attacking guys," said catcher Tyler Flowers, who was 2-for-4 with a run-scoring double. "He did a good job down and away to righties, that's usually a tougher pitch for him."

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