Chris Sale settled for a tough-luck loss on Thursday evening despite allowing just one unearned run on five hits across his six innings of work.

The 37-yeear-old southpaw racked up eight strikeouts on the night while issuing a pair of walks. The lone tally against him came in his final inning of work as Ian Happ worked a leadoff walk, advanced on a fielder's choice, took third on an error and then scored the game's first run on a bounce out off the bat of Matt Shaw. Sale got 16 whiffs on 100 pitches on the evening -- eight of those on his slider -- while posting a strong CSW of 32 percent. He has been as good as advertised through his first nine starts on the season, going 6-3 with a minuscule 1.96 ERA, 0.91 WHIP and a 64/14 K/BB ratio across 55 innings. He'll try to get back in the win column when he takes on the Marlins in Miami on Tuesday.