Chris Sale placed on the 15-day IL with fractured rib, Austin Cox joins the team

That’s a gut punch to the Braves in a season full of them, right when it looked like things were getting on track.

The Braves have placed Chris Sale on the 15-day IL with a fractured left rib, calling up Austin Cox in his place.

That’s a gut punch to the Braves in a season full of them, right when it looked like things were getting on track. It’s unclear when Sale suffered the fractured rib, although one strong possibility is this diving play he made in the ninth inning of Wednesday night’s game. To my eye, it looks like he landed more on his right side than left side on that play, but there isn’t any other obvious incident. The IL-stint is backdated to June 19th, although the diving play took place on the 18th.

Sale was right in the thick of Cy Young contention in the NL and was on a historic run of both run prevention and longevity within games over his last month of games. Hopefully he can settle back into dominance on his return. The average recovery time seems to be roughly two months for pitchers with fractured ribs, which would be a pretty devastating amount of time to miss Chris Sale for the team and Sale himself. It seems like Didier Fuentes may get a significant chance here to start for a few months if he proves up to the task, as he looked Friday.