Sale’s Buddy

As part of paying forward the the mentorship Chris Sale received when he arrived in the majors, Sale took Red Sox teenager Jason Groome under his wing:

At first blush, Sale and Groome were an odd couple this winter. Sale, 28 and built like a pipe cleaner, is a six-time All-Star with five consecutive top-five finishes in the American League Cy Young voting. Groome, 19 and cut from the mold of every classic power pitcher, has thrown all of 62 innings in the minors since the Red Sox drafted him in the first round in 2016 and signed him to a $3.65 million bonus.

But there they were, a pair of left-handed pitchers working out side by side three times a week at the Southwest Florida training facility co-founded by Lademann and pushing each other in ways that belied the vastly different points at which they find themselves in their careers, and lives.

“I remember my first couple weeks in the big leagues, and the guys that I had — [Mark] Buehrle, [Jake] Peavy, [John] Danks, Edwin Jackson, and in the bullpen, [Matt] Thornton, Jesse Crain, [Scott] Linebrink — I can sit here and rattle off names all day,” Sale says, recalling his veteran teammates with the Chicago White Sox. “How they helped me and kind of formed me, for me to say, ‘Hey, [if] you want to succeed, this is the kind of work you’re going to have to do,’ I’m just passing it along.”

Pay it forward. That was Sale’s intention in October when he heard from Red Sox mental skills coach Laz Gutierrez that Groome had moved his family from New Jersey to Fort Myers to be closer to the team’s training complex. Sale got Groome’s number and texted an invitation to join him for a workout.

Sale introduced Groome to Pilates, something he never did before. Groome pushes Sale to lift more. We will see how the relationship pays off over the next few seasons.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2G6rm4u