Red Sox place Chris Sale on the 10-day disabled list

Well, this is a bit of bummer after what’s been an exciting 24 hours for the Red Sox. In some bad news that came out of nowhere, the Red Sox are placing their best pitcher on the 10-day disabled list. Chris Sale has been diagnosed with inflammation in his left shoulder, and Brandon Workman will take his place on the active roster.

So, uh, yeah. There’s really not much to say here beyond it sucking. The good news is that Dave Dombrowski called the inflammation “mild” and also noted that it was not bad enough that the team even felt it was necessary for him to undergo an MRI. In fact, there could have been a pretty decent case for someone to make claiming this was just an excuse to get him a bit of a break over the course of a long season. This move is retroactive to July 28, so he’ll be eligible to return on the 7th of August. That’s not too long to miss

Well, that would make some sense except for the fact that he’ll be missing the all important Yankees series coming up this weekend. Sale was slated to start in the second game of that series on Friday, but now Brian Johnson is lined up to pitch in that game. The Red Sox have been putting the entire season over every individual game and series this year — too much success, I might add — but there’s no way they’d have Sale miss that game unless something was actually wrong. Hopefully their instincts are right and it really is nothing major, however. Sale, for whatever it may be worth, is adamant he will make his next start on August 7.

As for Workman, well, he wasn’t very pleased when he was originally sent down, and him being back up with the majors does add a fresh arm to the bullpen after they were worked extremely hard on Monday against the Phillies. I’m not quite as high on Workman as many others, but he’s a solid middle relief arm and having him over Johnson in that group is likely an upgrade. Obviously it’s not worth the cost of Sale, but it’s something I suppose.