Chicago White Sox starting pitcher Chris Sale has been dominating hitters for most of the season with his hard slider and funky delivery, and with the team in the thick of a playoff race Don Cooper isn't ready to talk about innings limits or pitch counts right now. Sale has a violent delivery that is called the "inverted-W," and earlier in the year he was shut down by the club for a short stint with something the team called "elbow tenderness." Bruce Levine of ESPNChicago.com has sources telling him the Sox will skip one of Sale's starts over the remainder of the regular season, but Cooper has refuted that report, telling Jon Greenberg: "As far as I'm concerned, he's got eight more starts left."
Cooper also refused to give any credence to the notion that the White Sox have imposed a hard innings cap or strict pitch count on Sale -- which is something the Washington Nationals have publicly implemented with star hurler Stephen Strasburg. Here is what Cooper had to say about the possibility of a hard innings cap being placed on Sale:
..."I'm not speaking for the organization, but I'm not going to use a number. We're going to use our eyes, we're going to use our gut, and we're going to use everything that we see and all of our instincts to make a decision on guys. We're in the heat of it here and we're trying to win a pennant. They don't want to be pulled and we don't want to pull them, but we're going to watch them."
Sale has posted a 2.65 ERA and a 15-4 record over 22 starts and 153.0 innings during 2012, and he figures to factor into the AL Cy Young race when voting rolls around.
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