Chris Sale has a sore elbow

The Red Sox announced last week that Chris Sale was going to start the season on the injured list, which was not ideal news of course, but it wasn’t supposed to be overly concerning either. The issue for the lefty was that he caught pneumonia right before camp which pushed his schedule back a couple of weeks. Given how last year went, the team understandably didn’t want to rush him so he’d be ready for Opening Day.

Well, things have changed. Sale threw a bullpen over the weekend in which he faced live hitters for the first time, and by all accounts things went okay. Apparently they were not so okay the next day. Sale complained of soreness in his elbow and the team sent him to get an MRI, the results of which will be sent to Dr. James Andrews. Ron Roenicke admitted there is some concern here. It’s not what you want.

I’m not even really sure what to say here. This is absolutely brutal news that has the potential to derail a season that needed most everything to go right if they were going to be playing in October. This is not an example of things going right!

Of course, we need to acknowledge that we don’t know the results of the MRI or Andrews’ opinion. The last time we got worked up about Sale going to see Andrews it didn’t turn out to be a big deal. Still, Sale missed the majority of the second half last season and struggled with velocity for much of the year when he was pitching. There have been worries about his elbow for over a calendar year now, and any setback like this is naturally going to cause concern. There’s nothing we can do now except wait to hear about the results and just tell ourselves that actually, this owns.