Chris Sale was providing the Boston Red Sox with solid pitching in the first game of the interleague series with the Philadelphia Phillies on Friday night — until the wheels started to come off the bus in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Sale only had given up one hit in the first three innings, striking out five along the way, but in the bottom half of the fourth, the Phillies appeared to have figured Sale out, tagging the left-handed pitcher for three runs off four hits.
“More so than anything, I give credit to my guys,” Sale said on NESN’s postgame coverage. “(Pitching coach Dave) Bush came out to the mound for a visit, and you know, a couple more things started happening, and the train was starting to get off the tracks a little bit.
“Emotions got high, and the pot started to kind of spill over a little bit. Everybody in that was in that infield, you know, I thanked them after the game because, without them, I don’t know what that would have looked like.”
Sale let his emotions get the best of him when the pitcher threw the baseball out of the infield and seemed to have hit himself in the head.
“I like to compete. I love it. But that’s what I really am passionate about. And it’s hard sometimes,” Sale said. “For them to see that and say, Hey, we need to get out there, and we need to get our guy calmed down. We need to get him back on track focus. Again, without them, I don’t know what the ending would have looked like. It probably could have been a lot worse.
“That’s all me. I got to figure out a way to do that myself. But again, I got it. I got to hang my hat on those guys and give them the credit they deserve because they were in the middle of a big league ball game, and potentially could have pissed that away really quick. And without them. There’s no question. It could have gotten a lot worse.”
Sale, whose expectations of himself are pretty high, was able to reign in the emotions and come back out for two more innings, surrendering only two hits and striking out three more batters in his third win of the season.
