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Chris Sale continues to work toward a comeback season in 2023 with the Boston Red Sox.
And taking the mound in Sunday's rubber match against the Cleveland Guardians, Sale took a progressive step forward. The 34-year-old pitched 6 1/3 innings, allowing just one run off three hits and no walks while striking out five hitters. The 7-1 Red Sox victory improved Sale's record to 2-2 through six starts, improving a previous 8.22 ERA to now a 6.75 ERA.
With 133 games left on the season, Sale intends to use outings as such as foundations down the line this season.
"These are all building blocks," Sale told reporters, as seen on NESN's postgame coverage. "You wanna take the good and build on it and anything bad that happens, learn from it. I just wanna keep getting to that seventh inning, eighth inning as much as I possibly can. That's what we're here to do."
Sale has gone six or more innings twice this season, which no other starting pitcher in Alex Cora's rotation has managed to do yet. He's also Boston's leader in innings pitched (29 1/3) but noted that there's plenty of improvement left to be made by the rotation entirely, as the bullpen has provided a major lift early on this season.
"I haven't looked at the stats but I just know we haven't had a lot of guys go six, seven, eight -- I don't think anyone's gone eight innings so our bullpen has picked up a heavy, heavy load this first month of the year," Sale said. "So it's on us to kind of start getting length and helping those guys out."
Given the Red Sox have been subjected to adapting in several areas, plagued with several early-season injuries, having Sale return to his All-Star-like ways would be a big development.
