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Timing of Chris Sale's surgery makes perfect sense -- even if the season weren't on hold

Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

It's easy to speculate that Chris Sale's decision to have Tommy John surgery was pushed by baseball's coronavirus shutdown, like a NASCAR driver going to the pits in a race halted by an accident. With the immediate future of the MLB season cloudy, Sale can use the downtime to get fixed.

But Sale's choice, announced by the Boston Red Sox on Thursday evening, was based on two factors that have nothing to do with the sport's lockdown.