Waving flag with Boston Red Sox professional team logo. Editorial 3D
What started out as a successful tenure with the Boston Red Sox ended with injury frustrations and a trade to the Atlanta Braves for Chris Sale. Sale, who began his MLB career in Chicago with the White Sox, ended up in Boston for the 2017 season. He later played an important role in helping the Red Sox win the 2018 World Series. Nevertheless, Sale doesn’t think his time in Boston was an overall success, something he admitted to on Foul Territory.
Chris Sale’s Red Sox admission
“In my mind, no. It (Sale’s time in Boston) was not (a success) because of a couple reasons,” Sale said. “I only had one full healthy season there. I was there for seven years.”
He went on to say that 2017 and 2018 were good seasons. In fact, he referred to 2017 as the “best year of my career from a stats standpoint.”
Sale finished the ’17 campaign with a 2.90 ERA across 32 games. He then pitched in 27 games in 2018, recording a 2.11 ERA and helping Boston win the World Series as mentioned earlier.
After being limited to 25 games pitched in 2019, Sale failed to make more than nine starts in either 2021 or 2022 after missing 2020. Sale’s final season with Boston in 2023 saw the left-hander appear in 20 games.
“You talk about the contract, I didn’t do anything post-contract which bothers me,” Sale continued. “If we would’ve won the World Series after I signed that contract, I would have felt maybe a little bit better. But I got traded there, we win a World Series, they obviously make a big commitment to me and kind of reward me for having two good years and bringing a championship to that city.
“‘Hey, we’re going all in on you, we’ve done our end of the bargain… here’s a big contract, now you get to go keep doing what you’re doing.’ Because they saw those two previous years and that’s kind of what they thought they had signed up for for five more years. And it wasn’t.”
