Boston Red Sox place Chris Sale on IL with elbow inflammation

In what could be a serious blow to their chances of defending the World Series title -- and may even have implications beyond this season -- the Boston Red Sox put lefthanded starter Chris Sale on the IL on Saturday with inflammation in his pitching elbow. The move is retroactive to Wednesday. But when addressing the media prior to Boston's game against the Orioles, Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski was not certain about the severity of the injury.

"There's going to be further evaluations," Dombrowski said. "This all happened today. So our doctors have looked at the MRI. We'll have other doctors look at the MRI, too, so we'll have further information that we'll be getting over the next few days. Tomorrow we won't get any because [of] it being a Sunday. So we're in a situation where I don't really know where it's going to take us at this point."

The injury is the latest blow to what has been the worst season of the Sale's career. He opened the season losing his first four starts and five of his first six and is five games under .500 (6-11) for the first time ever. His ERA of 4.40 is the highest of his career by almost an entire run.

On Aug. 8 Sale had one of his best starts of the season, striking out 13 while limiting the Angels to two hits over 8.0 scoreless innings in a 3-0 Boston win. Five days later he gave up three earned runs on five hits over 6.2 innings in a 7-6 victory over the Indians.

Dombrowski said that Sale felt some soreness in his elbow on Wednesday, the day after that start, and on Thursday. Sale first informed the Red Sox training staff of the soreness on Friday, and he underwent an MRI, which showed the inflammation.

Boston, which won the World Series title last year, entered Saturday's game against Baltimore 17½ games behind the division-leading New York Yankees in the AL East and 6½ games behind the second AL wild card spot.

Righthanded reliever Ryan Brasier was recalled from Triple-A Pawtucket to fill Sale's spot on the roster.