Chris Sale earned his fifth win of the season when the Boston Red Sox snapped their four-game losing skid by defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks Friday night.
Sale dazzled on the mound for Boston, giving up one run on four Diamondbacks' hits over five innings while striking out three and walking one. He threw 60.2% of his pitches for strikes (44 of 73 pitches). His only blemish was giving up two hits in the fourth when Emmanuel Rivera singled, and then Lourdes Gurriel Jr extended his hitting streak to 17 games when he tripled to center knocking in Rivera.
Even with the outstanding pitching line, what stood out more in Sale's performance was the fact he's been battling the stomach bug dating back to the Red Sox's first game against the Los Angeles Angels on May 22 when he was unable to keep food down. The 34-year-old southpaw didn't want to let his team down and told Red Sox pitching coach Dave Bush his motivation.
"Sometimes, when you're out there, you're not feeling good; you're not really thinking about anything else other than just getting to sit back down again," Sale told reporters, as seen on NESN's postgame coverage. "Connor (Wong) was great behind the play today. Again, our offense was unbelievable. And it allowed me to just kind of focus on throwing strikes and trying to hurry back to the dugout."
Sale added he didn't want to use being under the weather as an excuse and was thankful for the offensive run support in the win.
"It was a pretty rough couple of days," Sale said. "Everyone gets sick and has to go to work, so you gotta do it together."
Red Sox manager Alex Cora said the short outing from Sale was expected despite him pitching 21 innings over his last three starts.
"He had a rough week, physically under the weather," Cora told reporters, as seen on NESN's postgame coverage. "It was going to be short. He struggled throughout the week and he gave us five. That was good enough."
Sale was pitching so well, Cora thought about sending him out for the sixth but changed his mind.
"I think he feels great mechanically," Cora said. "... He grinded out that fifth inning and at one point I was thinking, 'We can go six today.' But thought we ought to be smart; get five. We got the win. He did an outstanding job."
