Rafael Devers: Chris Sale 'Scared Me a Little Bit' with Angry Dugout Speech

Boston Red Sox ace Chris Sale apparently scared some life into his team's offense during Game 4 of the World Series on Saturday.

"It scared me a little bit because I had never seen him yell like that, and the words that he was saying, I had never heard that come from him before," third baseman Rafael Devers said of Sale's motivational dugout speech, per John Tomase of WEEI. "But, you know, we came out sluggish, and that moment helped us get motivated for the rest of the game."

Tomase noted the speech came in the seventh inning with Boston trailing the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-0. Sale "punched the air with both hands" and "screamed" at the offense, and the unit responded with nine runs the rest of the way in a 9-6 victory.

Devers wasn't the only one to take note of Sale's speech, as second baseman Brock Holt said: "I think that kind of lit a fire under everybody. We didn't want to see him mad anymore. So we decided to start swinging the bats a little bit."

Manager Alex Cora joked, "My English is very limited, so I didn't understand what he was saying," and called the speech "a big moment."

That big moment helped move the Red Sox a win away from their fourth championship in 15 seasons and spearheaded an offensive explosion that pushed the Dodgers to the brink of elimination. Mitch Moreland's three-run homer in the seventh made it 4-3, Steve Pearce's solo shot in the eighth tied it, and Devers' pinch-hit go-ahead RBI single in the ninth jump-started a five-run frame.

It was reminiscent of the offense that led all of baseball in runs (876), hits (1,509), doubles (355), batting average (.268), on-base percentage (.339) and slugging percentage (.453) during the regular season and tormented opposing pitching staffs rather than the one that failed to score a run in the first 6.1 innings off starter Rich Hill.

The Red Sox offense may have needed an intense Sale speech to fire it up, but Boston will lift the Commissioner's Trophy if it defeats Clayton Kershaw in Sunday's Game 5 at Dodger Stadium.