Red Sox ace Chris Sale out long term with Tommy John Surgery

Chris Sale (Keith Allison, Wikimedia Commons)

According to John Tomase of NBC Sports on Thursday, the Boston Red Sox  have announced that starting pitcher Chris Sale of Lakeland, Florida will miss the 2020 Major League Baseball regular season and in all likelihood miss the entire 2021 Major League Baseball regular season because of Tommy John Surgery.

Do not be surprised if everyone in Red Sox Nation is now about to panic. Without Sale, Eduardo Rodriguez appears to be the Red Sox ace. He had an excellent 2019 season of 19 wins, six losses, 213 strikeouts and an earned run average of 3.81. After that however, the Red Sox starting rotation is downright terrible. Projected starters Martin Perez, Nathan Eovaldi and Ryan Weber all had earned run averages of over five in 2019 and the projected fifth starter, Collin McHugh, who Boston acquired from Houston, has only had eight starts in the last two seasons.

Sale struggled in 2019. He only had a record of six wins and 11 losses with an earned run average of 4.40. That was by far the highest earned run average that Sale has had in one season during his 10 years in Major League Baseball.

The Red Sox initially shut Sale down last August. At the time there was a belief within the Red Sox organization that he could avoid Tommy John Surgery. Sale was put on a throwing program on Monday and it as then announced on Thursday that long term surgery was required.

Where the Red Sox are receiving criticism is how they have handled the Sale situation. If they realized he needed Tommy John Surgery last August, he could have had it in September of last year and be ready for 2021 instead of 2022.

Now heading into the 2020 season with no one knowing when it will start, the Red Sox have one of the worst pitching staffs in the American League East, and maybe even Major League Baseball. The loss of Sale has that big of an impact.