Chris Sale will enter the MLB season as the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, and he has pretty good odds to win the honor for a second straight season.
However, it wasn’t too long ago that the star left-hander thought he would be out of baseball by 2025.
The back end of Sale’s Red Sox tenure was pretty grueling for the southpaw, who only pitched 151 total innings across a four-season stretch from 2020 to 2023. The eight-time All-Star struggled mightily to stay healthy and battled through various ailments and injuries, including an elbow issue that required Tommy John surgery.
After that hellacious run of setbacks, Sale thought the 2024 season would be his last.
“I thought that it was gonna be my last year, so I went into that offseason on a mission of like, ‘One more year left,'” Sale said on the latest “Baseball Isn’t Boring” podcast. “Because in my mind, I wasn’t walking away from baseball. I was walking away from getting hurt.”
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As Sale prepared for what he thought would be his swan song, he received the opportunity of a fresh start when the Red Sox traded him to the Braves in late December 2023. The 35-year-old signed a two-year extension with Atlanta days later, and he responded by winning the pitching triple crown in the Junior Circuit last season.
Time will tell how much longer Sale hangs around in the big leagues. But if the 2024 campaign was any indication, he has plenty left in the tank.
Featured image via Katie Stratman/Imagn Images
