Sale’s Tommy John Closes Red Sox’s Small Window To Compete In A.L. East

No one knows how many games long the 2020 MLB season is going to be once the suspension of play caused by the Coronavirus pandemic ends, but we now know that the odds the Boston Red Sox’s season is going to feel a lot longer just increased.

As if the Red Sox weren’t going to have a hard enough time competing for a postseason berth in the aftermath of their trade of star outfielder Mookie Betts and high-end starting pitcher David Price to the Los Angeles Dodgers last month, Boston received the worst possible news on ace lefty Chris Sale on Thursday, when it was announced he’ll undergo Tommy John surgery.

Typically a player undergoing that type of procedure requires a year to 14 months to return to the big leagues, and results have been varied in terms of pitchers returning to their prior form.

When the Red Sox had a solid first three starters – Sale, Eduardo Rodriguez and Nathan Eovaldi – to go with a deep bullpen and a dangerous lineup led by J.D. Martinez, Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers, they barely had a puncher’s chance to compete with the defending A.L. Eastern Division champion New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays. A shortened season, which seems likely because estimates keep pushing the end of the country’s current “social distancing” state deeper into the late spring and summer, might’ve upped the Red Sox’s odds based on their pitching if the staff was going to be led by a vintage-caliber Sale. Much like a short playoff series, a shortened season would probably benefit teams that lean more on their ace pitching.

Instead the Sale-less Red Sox are probably in for the type of season that will have people pining for the Tom Brady-less New England Patriots to start playing by late July.

The news didn’t come as a total shock to the Red Sox or their fans. The 30-year-old, who is starting the first season of the five-year, $145 million contract he signed prior to last season, hadn’t thrown a pitch in an exhibition game as of the suspension of spring training last week. The Red Sox revealed he had a strained flexor tendon on March 5. After several medical opinions, the Red Sox were hoping that rest and anti-inflammatories would solve his problem.

Instead the Red Sox are saying farewell to Sale and their hopes of proving everyone wrong in 2020. Big-market like Boston would usually be able to make up for the loss of a pitcher like Sale by signing or trading a similar pitcher. In fact, a team with the Red Sox’s resources probably would’ve covered itself by acquiring such a pitcher over the winter, considering Sale didn’t throw a pitch after Aug. 13 last season (and, of course, had the end of his 2018 regular season shortened by injury as well).

Alas we’re living in the era when the Red Sox are trying to get below the luxury tax threshold, a move they accomplished with the Betts/Price trade. They made basically no big-time acquisitions to sure up their other holes, never mind the potential they had for a massive gap in their pitching staff, over the winter or during spring training.

So now the Red Sox are really facing the consequences of their cost-cutting mission. Without Sale, their chances of another “impossible dream” season where they shut up critics of the Betts trade were just trimmed as much as ownership’s financial commitment to the roster was sliced this season.