Chris Sale had been excited by the prospect of a normal offseason, a luxury that’s eluded him for the past several winters.

“I finished the year relatively strong,” the veteran left-hander told reporters on a Zoom call on Thursday. He’d allowed no more than a single earned run in four of his five September starts. and been virtually un-hittable. “Walking off that mound the last (start) of the year, knowing that I was healthy and going into a good offseason, I was excited. It was nothing short of a disaster the last few years there, I’m not shying away from it. And I was excited. I was like, ‘You know what? I’ve got one last go at this, and I’m gonna put all my marbles and everything on the table. I’m going for it.”

At this point, he should’ve known better. There hasn’t been an uneventful offseason for Sale since the winter of ’18-19, in between his second and third seasons in Boston; countless injuries, setbacks, surgeries, a pandemic, an MLB lockout, and a hurricane in his native Florida saw to that.

The latest curveball came in 2023’s proverbial ninth inning. On December 30, the Red Sox decided to end the year with a bang no one saw coming: they traded Sale to the Atlanta Braves for young infielder Vaughn Grissom.

New year, new team…

New contract. On Thursday, the Braves doubled down on their decision to take a chance on Sale, signing him to a two-year extension worth $38 million in guaranteed money, with an $18M club option for the ’26 season.

It’s a restructuring of the remainder of the five-year, $145M extension the Red Sox gave Sale before the ’19 season, and adds about $17M to his total earnings. He was originally set to earn $27.5M in ’24 – $10M of it deferred for 15 years – and could’ve activated a $20M vesting option for ’25 by avoiding injuries and finishing in the top ten in Cy Young Award voting. Instead, he’ll now make $16M this season, meaning the Red Sox, who sent $17M to the Braves in the trade, are covering his entire salary.

In order to get to this point, Sale waived the no-trade protection he’d earned upon reaching 10 years of Major League service time. It wasn’t an easy decision, he said. He loved his manager, Alex Cora, whom he called “one of the best ever… a very special person to me,” and desperately wanted to be able to live up to the contract he’s felt he didn’t deserve over the last few years.

“They made a big commitment to me and I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain,” Sale admitted, not for the first time. Over the years, he’d admitted more than once that he agreed with those who said he didn’t deserve the guaranteed money he was making. That the Red Sox continued to treat him so well throughout each setback made him feel worse about being unable to reciprocate on the mound.

“They were always great to me,” he said. “They always treated me with respect. They always made me feel loved. They always made me feel wanted. Anything I ever wanted or needed, anything my family ever wanted or needed, they were there for me. Always. Through and through.”

“The people — it’s my teammates, it’s the front office, it’s the training staff, everybody there – all those guys had my back. I’m forever grateful for that. And I’m forever indebted to them,” he added.

The Red Sox acquired Sale from the Chicago White Sox in December 2016, and he continued to be one of the most dominant arms in the game during his first two seasons in Boston. He’d put together five consecutive All-Star seasons before he arrived, then extended the streak to seven. Between ’17 and ’18, he made 59 regular-season starts, pitching to a 2.56 ERA with 545 strikeouts across 372 1/3 innings. The Red Sox won back-to-back division titles in those first two seasons, and bulldozed their way to their fourth championship of the century in the latter. Sale memorably pitched the ninth inning in the deciding game; he clinched the victory with a strikeout so ferocious that Dodgers infielder Manny Machado fell to his knees swinging.

The image of Sale raising his arms to the sky in triumph would turn out to be the apex of his Boston tenure. After signing his extension, he struggled through most of the ’19 season, then landed on the injured list from mid-August on. Following April ’20 Tommy John surgery, the slew of injuries limited him to 31 regular-season starts (151 innings) over his remaining three seasons in a Red Sox uniform.

The fall from grace was a hard pill to take, in large part because it spanned so many years of dashed hopes. Sale became a tragic punchline with fans, who came to expect that he’d never be healthy, let alone effective, because the other shoe dropped over and over. “We need to dispatch some people to find whoever has the Chris Sale voodoo doll, and recover it,” former chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said in August ’22, after the lefty broke his wrist while rehabbing his surgically-repaired pinky finger. “It has been such a run of bad luck for him, and obviously, for us.”

“Best days of my life were there, worst days of my life were there,” Sale said.

Sale was always one of the most accountable players in the Red Sox clubhouse. He was exceedingly hard on himself, open about the toll being sidelined took on his mental health, and relentless in the pursuit of meaningful on-field contribution. No one was more frustrated by his inability to perform than the southpaw himself. Should he finally mount the comeback he’s been striving towards, he will be a game-changer. That it won’t be with the Red Sox is bittersweet.

“I wanted to give my teammates, that organization, and that city and fan base what they were supposed to get for years before that,” he said. “It ended up not working out, but I’m excited to take that same energy and bring it to this team, this organization, this clubhouse, this fan base, and show them that I got a lot of life left in this.”