Chris Sale has had great success against the Toronto Blue Jays this season, which was music to the Boston Red Sox’s ears heading into the teams’ matchup Tuesday night at Fenway Park.
Sale hadn’t allowed a run to the Blue Jays through his first three starts of the season against Toronto while striking out 35 and only walking two over 22 innings of work. Unfortunately for Boston, Sale’s success against the Jays didn’t continue in the middle game of the three-game series.
The left-hander turned in one of his worst performances of the season, allowing five runs on eight hits over just five innings of work in the Red Sox’s 9-4 loss. Even more uncharacteristic of Sale was that four of the eight hits allowed were home runs.
Boston’s offense wasn’t very strong in support of Sale, but the fiery lefty took full responsibility for the loss.
“Obviously not what we’re looking for,” Sale said, as seen on NESN’s Red Sox postgame coverage. “I put my team in a bad spot, I put my bullpen in a bad spot. This one’s on me.”
September hasn’t been kind to Sale, as he owns a 2-2 record with a 3.72 ERA through five starts this month. Sale doesn’t believe there’s a common thread to explain the recent struggles, but he understands how costly it is to be underperforming at this point in the season.
“I think they’re all individual cases,” Sale said. “I’m still doing what I can out there, sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. I mean you can’t have a good day at work every day. Unfortunately what I do is amplified because we’re here and we’re in the thick of it. I’ve just got to win games and I’m not doing that. I’m frustrated as anyone on the planet right now about that. You pick your head up, pick your teammates up and show up tomorrow ready to go.”
To make matters worse for the Red Sox, the New York Yankees picked up a 6-1 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday, trimming Boston’s lead in the American League East to three. The Sox can ill-afford to let these losses pile up, but Sale has no concerns about the teams mindset moving forward.
“We’ve set ourself up nice this year,” he said. “We play hard and we’re going to continue to play hard until the deed is done. Like I said, just come back tomorrow ready to go. Can’t let this kind of stuff linger, we’re too good of a ball team and we’ve been playing really good lately. I just went out there and stunk it up tonight and didn’t give us a chance to win. That’s on me. We clear that and come in ready to tomorrow, win a ballgame.”
Here are some other notes from Red Sox-Blue Jays.
— Josh Donaldson clubbed two home runs off Sale in the game, joining Miguel Cabrera, Eric Hosmer and Ryan Raburn as the only players to post multi-homer games against the left-hander.
— The Red Sox struck out 13 Blue Jays in the game, which marked the team’s 81st 10-plus strikeout game this season, a franchise record.
— Boston is 17-40 this year when opponents score five runs or more.
— Sale now has 308 strikeouts this season, putting him five behind Pedro Martinez for the Red Sox’s single-season strikeout record.
Thumbnail photo via Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports Images
