Anti-Bostonian: From hope to nope on Opening Day

Chris Sale toed the rubber on a balmy late-afternoon affair in Seattle Thursday evening. The solemn, slanky (a combination of slinky and lanky) left-hander, fresh off sealing the 'sale' of his new $145-million contract, carried the weight of his price tag to the mound. Sale was disturbed.

He would last but three innings and escaped with scars atypical of a man walking off a pitcher’s mound in Seattle. T-Mobile Park, the Mariner's spacious stadium, is renowned for its deep, offense-averse dimensions that have doomed many a home-run hitter. To make matters worse, while the Seattle offense is not a Div. III baseball team (as the Baltimore Oriole offense seems to be), it would certainly not be mistaken for a high-powered machine; in fact, it was Seattle who came in at a paltry 21st (out of 30!) in runs scored for the 2018 season, and that was before losing Nelson Cruz, Robinson Cano and other friends who made it tick. They’re not 'sleepless,' but they’re certainly not well-caffeinated.

Chris Sale proved to be their coffee. In those three innings, Sale gave up seven runs and, most surprising of all, three home runs. In 2018, Sale allowed two home runs in a single start once, let alone three dingers. Two of them came to a man named Tim Beckham, who was released by the Orioles and their Div. III-level offense and, as of Sunday, has 51 career home runs in 1,329 at bats. That’s not good. And he hit two in consecutive innings off of the Boston lefty.

“Sale did not elicit a single swing-and-miss on his fastball,” Alex Speir of the Boston Globe said, via NESN. “[This was] the first time in 61 Red Sox starts [regular season or playoffs], that he’d failed to get a swing-and-miss on a four-seamer.”

Sale could provide interesting room for discourse on an under-the-radar philosophical debate, many to one typical college student may grapple with: does one achieve peak performance with the certainty of the next few years in their career insured, or does the incentive to earn a contract propel one to perform at the highest possible level?

Consider a college student getting a job for post-grad two years into school: would their grades and performance increase from a possible lack of pressure, or maybe alternatively decrease from a lack of incentive? Now, the average student isn’t in line for a $145-million dollar contract, but the principle of incentive should hold true.

It’s also rather difficult to sympathize with a man carrying the baggage of a nine-digit contract — a contract not too far below the price that Red Sox-owner John Henry paid for the franchise back in 2003. But Sale is caught in an incentive-dilemma that cakes the soul with arbitrary values of worth and questions what the money really represents and how to throw a good four-seam fastball and what the weather is on a normal Seattle Thursday and if Sale even knows his last name means salt in French. In other words, doubt.