Here’s the good news: As far as baseball health goes, Chris Sale is fine.
But as far as his battle with pneumonia, he’s still trying to get back on track.
The Boston Red Sox ace’s spring training has gotten off to a delayed start after he began suffering the flu, which then ended up becoming pneumonia. This comes after he was shut down at the end of last season due to an issue with his elbow. But reports on his elbow have been and remain good, now the Red Sox just are in a waiting game for Sale to strengthen back up from the sickness.
“He still doesn’t have full strength back,” interim manager Ron Roenicke said Saturday, via MassLive. “He played catch today. Stretched it out. He also did that yesterday. So I think he’s progressing along fine. We’re going to still go a little bit easy with him.
“He’s huge for our starting rotation and he’s one of the best pitchers in the game,” Roenicke later noted. “So whenever we can get him to start up, it would be silly for us to try to push him to come back sooner than probably he should physically. It’s not worth taking a risk on having him Opening Day exactly and where we’re pushing him to get him there. He’s important to us as we go through the season, and hopefully get into the playoffs, and keep him strong there. So to push anyone nowadays, it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to any of us.”
In addition to Sale, the Red Sox rotation will consist of Eduardo Rodriguez, Nathan Eovaldi, Martin Perez and an opener. With few minor league options in terms of big league-ready starters, not having Sale to begin the season would be tough to deal with. That said, keeping the long-term outlook in focus makes plenty of sense with him.
