We had a great matchup of two dominant lefties in Spring Training on Saturday, with Chris Sale facing Garrett Crochet and Sale’s former team, the Red Sox.
Sale gave up two very hard-hit balls in the first at over 104 MPH each, but only allowed a walk for a single baserunner. Sale was able to reign in the hard contact after the first and generally looked like himself, touching 97 on the radar gun and generating plenty of whiffs, despite relatively low strikeout totals. Michael Harris gave Chris an assist with a great jumping catch in the third. Sale continued to cruise his way through the game efficiently, completing 6.0 innings on 86 pitches wit 4 strikeouts, 1 walk, and 1 run allowed. That’s a solid outing for Sale, even with the relatively tame strikeout total by his standards in his final spring tune-up. Tyler Kinley took over in the seventh and allowed a single in a scoreless frame with one strikeout. Dylan Lee was the last major league pitcher to get some work on Saturday, as he worked a clean 8th inning with one strikeout.
On offense, Austin Riley continued his strong spring, blasting a 110 MPH home run off of Crochet in the second and a hard-hit double in the third.
Elsewhere on offense, Ozzie also hit a double, Olson hit a 101 MPH single in the third and a 107 MPH single in the seventh, and Eli White drew a walk. There were some additional Looney Tunes moments that resulted in a box score single for Olson and double for Riley in the fifth that were not batted balls deserving of those box score classifications. Those were the most notable performances at the plate by players expected to be on the Opening Day roster.
Join us again tomorrow at 1:05 PM ET, as Reynaldo Lopez gets his last bit of work in this spring.
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