In December, the Boston Red Sox traded starter Chris Sale to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for young middle infielder Vaughn Grissom.
For a time, many defended the trade owing to Sale’s inability to stay healthy and the $16 million salary he was owed. But with Sale now the odds-on favorite to win the National League Cy Young award and Grissom having spent most of 2024 in Triple-A, the trade looks worse than ever. Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow is answering for it.
Breslow appeared as a guest on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show” on Sept. 19. The hosts didn’t mince words when bringing up the trade, asking him point-blank if he regretted moving on from Sale.
While conceding that the Red Sox could have benefited from Sale’s services this year, he added that “this trade can only be fairly judged or evaluated down the road.” He also expressed a belief in Grissom’s potential going forward.
Craig Breslow assesses Red Sox’s Chris Sale trade on The Greg Hill Show
It was a political answer that avoided saying outright what is now obvious — that the Red Sox lost this trade. Of course, with how much criticism Breslow’s front office has faced for its relative inactivity, he can’t just admit that one of the few moves the Red Sox did make this offseason was a disaster.
But, to be fair to Breslow, the trade didn’t look anywhere near this bad when it was made. While Grissom wasn’t exactly the best return, injuries had made Sale a shadow of his former self in the three seasons prior to the trade, throwing just 151 innings combined with a 3.93 ERA in that span. Paying Sale a substantial salary just for him to spend most of his time on the injured list wasn’t the best use of the Red Sox’ payroll. There was no reason to suspect that he’d throw more innings in 2024 than he had in the last three years combined, nor that he’d manage an MLB-leading 2.38 ERA, 0.5 home runs per nine or 11.4 strikeouts per nine.
You can’t win every trade you make, and no one could have predicted how well Sale would fare in Atlanta. This is hardly the Mookie Betts trade, which was a loss the moment it was made.
The most important takeaway from this interview was that Breslow didn’t indicate that the Red Sox would be more cautious going forward, because the worst outcome of the Sale trade for Boston is an even more apprehensive front office. The Red Sox need something to change if they want break out of mediocrity and keep up with the talented AL East, and that means taking risks. As Sale has proven, those risks don’t always pan out, but they’re still worth taking.
