Start me, says White Sox’ Sale
Chris Sale is right back where he started.
After complaining of pain in his left elbow, the White Sox’ promising left-handed starting pitcher was pulled out of the rotation before last Friday’s game at Detroit.
Sale was not placed on the disabled list. Rather, he was named the Sox’ closer.
But that all changed before Friday night’s game against the Royals at U.S. Cellular Field.
Sale stood up for himself during an afternoon meeting with general manager Kenny Williams, assistant GM Rick Hahn, manager Robin Ventura and his coaching staff and team doctors.
After getting an MRI on Thursday that came back clean and forcefully proclaiming himself 100 percent healthy, Sale was moved back to the rotation. He starts against Kansas City on Saturday night.
“Let’s just say I really, really thought I could do this,” said Sale, who was 3-1 with a 2.81 ERA in 5 starts before throwing 1 inning of relief at Cleveland on Tuesday. “This is something that’s been a dream of mine and a passion of mine for very long and at the end of the day, I felt that I could do this and felt poorly that I set a goal to do this and fell drastically short.
“I felt like I was letting my teammates down and felt like I was depending on other people to pick up my slack. It was disappointing to me not being able to fulfill something I was supposed to do.”
Fulfilling a dream with a blown-out elbow is not possible, but Sale said his initial physical worries have dissipated.
“I knew from Day One that it was never pain,” he said. “It wasn’t like I had to skip a day or start or I had to put my clothes on a different way or something like that. It was something that was just sore, and at the end of the day it just was.”
At the end of a long week on the Sale front, Williams said he doesn’t understand why there was any type of confusion.
“I was actually surprised that some of the things were written and said with regards to this and people not understanding,” Williams said. “We take care of our players, we take our pitchers in particular. We are going to shut you down if we think there’s something going on that isn’t quite kosher.”
Williams cited Jake Peavy, who talked himself back to the mound in each of the past two seasons.
He also cited John Danks and Gavin Floyd, and of course, Sale.
“This is not new, so whatever confusion you guys have, it is what it is,” Williams said. “I’ve got other things to do.”
Williams said Sale pitching 1 inning at Cleveland on Tuesday basically amounted to a side day. And don’t be surprised if the lanky lefty skips more starts throughout the season.
“We’re looking at it in terms of we have to do what we have to do to manage him through the course of the season,” Williams said. “We may have to do it again; I hope not. We may have to skip him. The general soreness had to subside.”
Williams frequently discussed the White Sox’ history of protecting their players from potential injuries — especially pitchers.
With Herm Schneider in the early stages of his 35th year as trainer, the Sox used the disabled list just 84 times from 2002-11, the lowest total in baseball.
Sale is back in the rotation, but not without some stipulations.
“Everything will be monitored,” Williams said. “And we all have an agreement. We’ve got an agreement with Chris that he will be as honest and truthful with the medical staff as he possibly can be, and he’ll be honest with himself. You may see him skipped from time to time if he’s having any issues at all and it’s not with the mindset that that automatically means there’s a red flag. We’re just trying to get him through his inaugural campaign of starting.”
There is little doubt the Sox are a better team when a healthy Sale is in the rotation.
If Sale didn’t call Williams from Cleveland on Monday and stand up for himself in Friday’s meeting, he’d likely be in the bullpen for the rest of the season.
“The forcefulness in which he wanted to get back on the mound told us some things,” Williams said. “It told us the soreness wasn’t something he felt was painful enough to where we had to pull the plug on him, and it told us he’s got a little extra in the mental department maybe to take that leap from being a mid-rotation guy to one day being a top of the rotation guy.
“He was adamant about it to the point where he almost crossed the line, and I liked that.”
sgregor@dailyherald.com