Red Sox 4, Rangers 2: Another dominating performance from Chris Sale

BOSTON — Better late than never is one of those mildewed sayings that should be erased from the world’s hard drives, especially when it comes to the Red Sox and Cy Young Award winners.

It may as well have been never when they acquired Bob Turley after his Cy Young Award, or Tom Seaver, Frank Viola or Eric Gagne, etc. And, for that matter Bartolo Colon.

On the other side of that equation, though, you have Chris Sale.

He added to his potential Cy Young [...]

BOSTON — Better late than never is one of those mildewed sayings that should be erased from the world’s hard drives, especially when it comes to the Red Sox and Cy Young Award winners.

It may as well have been never when they acquired Bob Turley after his Cy Young Award, or Tom Seaver, Frank Viola or Eric Gagne, etc. And, for that matter Bartolo Colon.

On the other side of that equation, though, you have Chris Sale.

He added to his potential Cy Young resumé Wednesday night by outpitching Colon in Boston’s 4-2 victory over the Rangers. Sale is 10-4 with a 2.23 earned run average, and in the last five weeks has been as dominant as any Boston starter in recent decades.

He is 5-1, 0.94 in his last seven starts. In his last four starts, all wins, Sale is 4-0 and has allowed one earned run in 27 innings (0.33 ERA) with four walks and 48 strikeouts.

Boston has won nine in a row and is 65-29, on a pace to win 112 games this season. The Sox retained their 3˝ game lead over the Yankees in the A.L. East.

Sale is not a newcomer to success, but these recent performances have been at another level, one that he perhaps has never reached before. If he has, Sale’s not saying.

“If I did, I wouldn’t talk about it,” he said. “This is a pretty funny game, you know. Any time you feel like you’re on top of the world, you get knocked right off.”

In this latest win, Sale worked seven innings and allowed just six hits. He walked one and struck out 12. The bullpen faltered a bit as Heath Hembree gave up two runs in the eighth. Craig Kimbrel got the last four outs, the key one being a bases-loaded strikeout of Joey Gallo in the eighth.

Colon fell to 5-7 with a six-inning effort.

The Red Sox had 11 hits and for the second straight night had a triple, but no home runs. Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi and Eduardo Nunez had two hits each while Xander Bogaerts had three, including his second triple in two nights.

“It looks like in the last seven, eight [starts], it’s been effortless,” Alex Cora said of his ace, adding that Sale has bought into the conditioning and usage program the team designed for him in spring training. “He’s where he wants to be and the ball’s coming out of his hand very clean. It’s been impressive.

“We feel that now, with this break, he’s going to reset and reload and he’s going to have a good second part of the season.”

The Rangers were an offensive nuisance more than anything in the early innings, putting a runner on base here and another one there, but didn’t do anything scary until the sixth. Elvis Andrus led off with a double and Nomar Mazara’s infield single moved him to third.

Sale then struck out Adrian Beltre and started a 1-6-3 double play on a hard shot by Rougned Odor.

“I think the double play, that was great,” Cora said. “He caught it under control, knew the situation, turned and threw to second base and Xander turns it. He knew right after that that he had one more inning.

“He told me after the game that that felt good.”

Boston scored in the second when Bogaerts singled to left and went to second base on Colon’s errant pickoff attempt. Brock Holt’s grounder to second moved Bogaerts over to third and he scored when Odor was charged with the Rangers’ second error of the inning.

Texas had the infield in for Nunez and he lofted a popup just past the grass into center field. Odor went back to get it but muffed the attempt and the ball fell safely as Bogaerts scored.

The Red Sox then gave their ace a little breathing room with a three-run rally in the fifth. Betts and Benintendi both singled to left, then J.D. Martinez ripped one down the left-field line and into the corner for a double. The hit drove in Betts easily, Benintendi not so easily, but it was a two-run double in any case to make it a 3-0 game.

Bogaerts’ triple drove home Martinez and Sale and the Sox had just enough to make it through the night.