In January of 2024, at a crossroads of an already long and accomplished professional baseball career, Chris Sale was willing to try something — anything — new.
The wear and tear of being an MLB pitcher for more than a decade was taking its toll — shoulder pain (on both sides), the lingering effects of Tommy John surgery, the scars of a broken finger and a broken wrist. There were times when Sale would wake up in the morning and not be able to fully turn his head to one side or the other because of neck stiffness.
Having been traded by the Red Sox to the Braves, Sale was also in limbo when it came to finding a spot to work out in the offseason during that first month of 2024. Since 2017 he had just gone down the street from his house to JetBlue Park, the spring training home of the Red Sox, in Fort Myers, Florida.
“I got my employee card pulled there,” Sale said, laughing.
The series of events that follow provides part of the answer to the question that has reverberated through Truist Park, and much of the baseball world, this season: How is Sale doing what he is doing at age 37?
Sale (14-9) goes into Friday’s start against the Phillies having put together yet another Cy Young-worthy campaign. In 20 of his 25 starts, he’s allowed two runs or less. He’s averaging 7.4 strikeouts per game. His fastball is averaging 96.1 mph and often touches 99 and 100.
In the National League, Sale is among the top five in strikeouts, WHIP, ERA and fewest walks allowed. Analytically, Sale ranks in the 96th percentile or better in pitching run value, fastball run value and chase percentage.
It’s been an awe-inspiring stretch of late, too, for Sale who has a 1.90 ERA in his last eight starts. His Aug. 27 11-strikeout shutout of the Dodgers provided the pitching highlight of the season for the first-place Braves.
Sale’s success this season, and his success since joining the Braves, doesn’t strictly come from his athletic ability though. It’s rooted in that ’24 offseason, when the left-hander picked up the phone and reached out to former Red Sox strength and conditioning coach and longtime friend Kirby Retzer.
Retzer suggested Sale pay a visit to Jay Weitzner, a certified muscle system specialist at Symmetry Exercise Clinic in Naples, Florida.
“This guy (Weitzner) does a lot of different stuff than, like, I’ve ever done,” Sale said. “Like, pushing overhead, a lot of pullups, a lot of core stuff, a lot of neck exercises which I had never really thought a whole lot of.
“It’s just different. He pushes on different parts of your body and just kind of feels where you’re at. He almost looks at the body like a mechanic of a car. Even stuff with my right shoulder and my right arm, my neck, my hip, stuff like that. It was more different than anything I’ve ever done.”
Weitzner, who doesn’t exclusively work with athletes, started from scratch with Sale, focusing on strengthening his neck and shoulder muscles before worrying about anything else. Weitzner said he wasn’t worried about improving Sale as a baseball player, rather improving his physical well-being so he could be the best pitcher he could be.
“Very quickly, (Sale’s) like, ‘Oh my god.’ And then right away everything started feeling better and then he could move and not hurt,” Weitzner said. “That was pretty quick. That only took a couple sessions. He was shocked, and it was awesome.”
The Weitzner way is not for everyone — both he and Sale admit that much. The marriage of the two took the convergence of Sale’s willingness to buy into a unique methodology and Weitzner viewing Sale as another client and not a special case because Sale is a possible future Hall of Famer.
Weitzner explained how he knew, at the very least, that Sale could perform athletically at a very high skill level, but that something was prohibiting him from reaching that skill level. Once they figured out the roadblocks, the rest fell into place.
“There’s things that I had him do that he hadn’t been doing for years and years because people didn’t want him doing it,” Weitzner said. “One of our mantras is ‘work the muscles, spare the joint.’ I don’t want to mess up the joints. I just want to make his muscles better. I got to choose exercises that do different things, that work muscles in different ways and spare joints.
“It’s about identifying very specific conditions where the muscle system doesn’t work well. I got to figure out the exact position: seated, lying, face up, face down, one side, the other side, standing — the position of every single part of his body, and then get the right configuration, and then impart a force onto him in some very specific situation to figure out, let’s say his neck or shoulder doesn’t work well, I got to find that position.”
Weitzner painted a clearer picture.
“(Sale’s) lying on his left side. Legs are stacked on top of each other. His left arm is hanging off the table, his head is off the table. He then bends his neck to the right. He then takes his left arm that was hanging straight down, he swings it up over his head and bends it to the right, and then he tries to bend his upper body to the right, and then he bends his neck more to the right. And I’m pushing on his head and his shoulder, and he’s just like, ‘What? Like, what are we doing?’”
This really is working, huh?
After a pause, Sale said: “It can’t not be?”
Working with Weitzner is only one part of the puzzle.
After taking 10-14 true days off when the season ends, Sale gets right back to work with a training regimen that has him doing some sort of exercising Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. And he throws a lot, too, a change from earlier in his career when he may have been hesitant to stress the left arm as much.
Sale’s eldest son, Rylan, is his throwing partner most days. When Sale needs to throw a high-intensity bullpen he’ll head over to Florida Gulf Coast University, where coach Dave Tollett can usually find Sale a catcher.
One would think as Sale has gotten older, he may want to preserve his $27-million-a-year left arm. Not the case.
“The only thing I messed up in ‘25 is I threw less, thinking I’ll save it for the end of the year. And I mean, you saw the start of my ‘25 season — my mechanics were terrible, my arm slot was all over the place,” Sale said. “It took me a month, almost a month and a half into the season, to get back on track. I throw more and I lift more than I have ever. Even during the season, I throw more.”
And during the season, the work doesn’t stop for Sale, either.
He made it a point to praise the efforts of Braves’ head athletic trainer George Poulis and his staff, team massage therapist Nate Leet and team chiropractor Hamid Sadri, among many others in the organization.
As for Weitzner, although he has visited Sale during the season at times, he generally stays out of the way. He may send a text message congratulating Sale after a well-pitched game, or suggest an exercise if Sale reaches out to him for guidance.
Otherwise, he sits back and enjoys the ride like everyone else.
“I’m super happy. I love that I helped him,” Weitzner said. “I got one of the most skillful guys ever that something got in the way, so I was happily able to remove the thing that got in the way so he can get back to doing what he does. In no way am I like, ‘I did it!’ But I’m also like, ‘I definitely helped put him in a scenario where he can do what he does.’ So that’s awesome. I love it.”
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
