BALTIMORE – With the afternoon heat near sweltering and the calendar almost flipped to June, it did not seem like a coincidence that Chris Sale was throwing more sliders Thursday.
Held back so far this season from throwing his hard breaking pitch with regularity, Sale had been reinventing himself only to moderate success. Fastballs and changeups have been taking Sale only so far as he entered his start Thursday with a 3-2 record and a 4.21 ERA.
In each of his first three seasons, Sale has come down with some type of arm discomfort by now. Last season, he hit the disabled list in April with a forearm strain.
So it made sense that Sale entered his start Thursday having thrown a slider just 11 percent of the time, the lowest percentage of his young career. That all changed Thursday, when 20 percent of his 120 pitches against the Orioles in Game 1 of a doubleheader were breaking balls.
“He just had a real good feel for it,” manager Robin Ventura said of Sale’s slider. “He only threw a few of the ones that are kind of back-breakers, so I think that’s why he was extended somewhat to being able to go back out there. He wasn’t all-out effort and I think that was because he had the soft stuff going. He felt great.”
Sale seemed to downplay the increased number of sliders Thursday, saying he just throws what his catcher requests.
“I think it goes game-by-game,” Sale said. “I’m not sitting here saying I’m going to throw 30 sliders in the next one. Actually, I don’t know what pitch I’m going to throw. I have to go with what (catcher Tyler Flowers) has for me, and today he saw that I had a better breaking ball than normal and we tried to use it as best we could.”
Sale, a Florida native, was loving the warm, humid weather, even if the mere concept of Thursday’s doubleheader was taxing on the White Sox. The two games came about because of the civil unrest in Baltimore last month forcing two postponed games the last time the team was in town.
“This is what I grew up in,” Sale said about the sticky conditions. “This is what I played every game of baseball in pretty much before college, so it was nice to get hot and get a little sweat going and stay loose.”
With Sale potentially mixing in more sliders down the road and Jeff Samardzija looking like he is finally hitting his stride, the White Sox are getting the 1-2 punch they hoped for on a more consistent basis.
“They’re tough,” Ventura said of his top two pitchers. “They’ve really turned the corner of being able to take it up a notch and give what these guys can do. You look forward to having them back to back like this.”
Sale has been watching Samardzija’s recent success with keen interest, hoping to match it. He said they are feeding off each other.
“One hundred percent, I think we all do,” Sale said. “You don’t want to get outdone. I mean, we’re competitors, so any time he goes out there and has a strong one, you want to follow that lead. It goes the exact opposite, too. If I have a bad one, [Jose Quintana] is right behind me to pick me up. That goes for all of us. You always want to be the guy extending those.”