Chris Sale (plus $17mil) traded to Atlanta for Vaughn Grissom
- Thread starter Bosoxman2004
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Change of scenery can be good but Sale wasn’t exactly looking for a change. It’d be different if we still had Dave Bush, who was lousy. But with Bailey in the fold, I can be reasonably confident Sale would be doing the same thing here. But maybe there’s an injury curse that he shedded by leaving Boston? Also sometimes it is the change of scenery and the player wouldn't have been anywhere near as good if they hadn't been traded. AJ Burnett and more recently Sonny Gray are two guys who went back to being great the second NY traded them to the NL.
We unfortunately only have the one timelime of events to observe (as far as I'm aware), a SSS of timelines.
I think it's a bit myopic to look at this only from the perspective that the Red Sox specifically sought out a trade to move Sale. It is entirely possible that the Braves came calling first and made an offer that Breslow didn't feel he could say no to (or kept upping it until he said yes), and absent that call Sale is in the Red Sox rotation right now. The fact that the Braves almost immediately extended Sale for another year before he threw a pitch for them seems to suggest that they were motivated to acquire him.
What about the fact the Red Sox paid $17 million to get the deal done? That suggests some motivation.
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Well, if they're pulling the trigger at all, they're obviously motivated to do the deal in some capacity. Maybe the Braves came asking for Sale and offered two options: a) lower-level prospects X & Y and we take his whole salary or b) Grissom and you subsidize some of his salary. Is choosing (b) the Sox wanting to be rid of Sale or the Sox really wanting Grissom?
My point being, we don't know the origins of the trade. We don't know who initiated things. Perhaps because of that, we shouldn't be making assumptions and drawing firm conclusions from those assumptions.
Or it suggests that Sale was often-injured, and the Sox were acquiring a pre-arb MI.
Yeah, we know. But Red(s)HawksFan was talking about "who called who" and that was the point I was trying to address.
Well we now know the Braves came calling the Sox about Sale multiple times under Chaim. So they probably initiated the conversation again under Breslow. But what I want to know is did the Braves offer the Red Sox the same framework of a deal that they had previously offered Bloom that was obviously turned down?
I think it was reported that the previous offer was to take on Sale's whole contract, but with very little talent coming back.
https://www.audacy.com/weei/sports/red-sox/why-the-red-sox-decided-to-move-on-from-chaim-bloom
One instance was particularly striking. Per a major league source familiar with the situation, just before the 2022 trade deadline - and a few weeks after Chris Sale had broken his finger broken in his second outing of the season - a team approached Bloom about dealing for the lefty. The acquiring club was agreeing to take on all of the money left on Sale's contract (2 1/2 seasons of more than $50 million), while sending some semblance of players. The Red Sox wanted better players than were offered and no deal was done.
Shrug. Even if so, what does that have to do with the "Frailty of the Modern Pitcher" anyway?
For those interested, Sale gave up 8 earned runs in 4 innings for the Cobb County Braves today against Oakland.
Sale is having a monster season. He is second among starters in the NL in WAR. This is just crazy, do you blame Breslow for this trade? I don't, I am convinced that he and the team needed a change of scenery. But it sure would be great to have this Chise Sale now.
I think if you took a poll after the Sox brought in Giolito and dealt Sale and asked which starter would make at least 25 starts, the 100% consensus would have been Giolito. It was the right trade.
I love Chris Sale, love watching him pitch, and I’m happy for him.
And if he was still with the Sox, he probably would have tripped over his dog in the middle of the night and broken something
And if he was still with the Sox, he probably would have tripped over his dog in the middle of the night and broken something
While there are times I wish we still had Chris Sale pitching for us, He did seem to have a great deal of issues staying healthy here, and so, I recall a deep and meaningful scene from the highly regarded 70’s classic “Cannonball Run”
View: https://youtu.be/AjGXn249Fc0
View: https://youtu.be/AjGXn249Fc0
I'm still wondering why Grissom was the choice when close to major league ready pitching was a much more immediate need based on their depth charts.
Grissom could be a more than fine player - but where does he fit in even a year or so from now? The big gamble from my view point is whether Nick Yorke becomes a viable starter or not.
Grissom could be a more than fine player - but where does he fit in even a year or so from now? The big gamble from my view point is whether Nick Yorke becomes a viable starter or not.
Yes I blame Breslow.
They didn't need to trade him at that time.
It was a mistake to trade him at that time even for Grissom.
They should have held on to him until the trade deadline and then decided based on proposed return.
I said this when the trade was made. I didn't like it then and I sure don't like it now.
With Sale this season we would easily make the wildcard.
Without him not so sure.
No, sometimes it's time to move on. The guy hadn't been healthy for years. It was well past time to close the book on his Sox tenure.
It's shocking he's still not hurt. The guy is made of glass.
Because no such pitching was available in a trade involving Sale, but might be available in a trade involving the people who become expendable if Grissom is a "more than fine player"?
No? It's been a journey with this trade.
Before the trade, I poo-poohed trade ideas because I assumed it would be a straight salary dump, and so we'd be better off rolling the dice with him starting.
Then Breslow found a trade that offloaded meaningful salary and added a pretty good prospect in Grissom. That considerably exceeded my estimation of Sale's trade value. Pretty good! But as it has turned out, Grissom has contributed nothing (so far! he's still a super young player with a good-to-great minor league track record) while Sale has been great for Atlanta. So if we narrow the focus just to 2024, I was right the first time LOL.
But we really shouldn't narrow the focus to 2024; we're a team with an opening window, not a closing one. Shifting 2024 value to 2025–30 makes a ton of sense for us. And while I get that people are down on Grissom, I think that's quite premature. He has a bad line in AAA right now, but with good K/BB numbers and a low BABIP. (It's not his fault he's been passed by Campbell in the system.)
...and then we traded Nick Yorke, who is a lesser version of Vaughn Grissom (in my view; both are hit-over-power 2B/LF types, but Grissom mostly hit better age/level through the minors, is more projectable, has a more reliable hit tool, and is more plausibly an infielder), for another SP post-prospect in Quinn Priester. Priester is young and has terrific peripherals in the minors that he hasn't made click in a few major league stints. Priester got shelled in his first start in Worcester, but has had two pretty good appearances since, including a 65% groundball rate.
I actually like the trade better if you think about it as Sale and Yorke for Grissom and Priester.
Second base has been a revolving door of suck since Pedroia retired. I don't blame Breslow for trying to get a right handed hitter who might stabilize the position. And the rotation was killed by injuries the last couple of years, so switching from unreliable Chris Sale to 30-start workhorse Lucas Giolito made sense. Then of course the two guys they got immediately got hurt and the whole thing blew up.
What I said at the time was that trading Sale would make sense only if they had a more significant addition than Giolito coming.
I think the early 2024 WAR projections for Sale and Giolito were about equal. Projections are seldom accurate because it's baseball, but they are at least objective and data-based.
So objectively speaking, swapping Sale for Giolito was a wash. And we needed a major upgrade.
My personal hunch is that the Sale trade had a lot to do with the budget Breslow was given. I think he needed that $10 million to make the other moves he wanted to.
You objectively have to imo. Acknowledge the good with the bad and all that jazz. This is going down as a historically bad trade right now as far as mainsteam infamany will go. No amount of squinting at Grissom's past AAA #'s is going to trump the perspective or potential end grade fact that Breslow traded a potential 2024 Cy Young Award winner away for an MLB lemon that Atlanta was already giving up on.
That does not end the year as some small and side note boo boo. It's the type of haunt you forever stink that permenantly sticks to a guy. Lingering around in the public consciousness, and which the complaints (especially here) just get louder on as time goes forward.
I'm sorry but this is bullshit...
Every year we said "This is the year we will have healthy Sale for the entire season"
And like Lucy with the Football he would get injured and be out for a large portion of every season....
At a certain point you would be rightfully laughed at for continuing to believe he would be healthy for the entire damn season
This is pretty much where I'm at. Sale had a 99th percentile outcome, good for him. Honestly, he deserves some good luck. I think trading for a starter quality young 2B and then trading Yorke lets you know what their evaluation of Yorke was. And they turned him into a very interesting prospect at a position of need. Grissom had a pretty unlucky outcome this year, but I still think the overall decision was good. I think that going forward Priester and Grissom are going to have a much better chance of being part of the next Sox contending team than Sale and Yorke would.
I've never been so happy as when Sale was traded, and that hasn't changed despite his season with Atlanta. He could not stay healthy here, he wasted an enormous amount of the organization's time, energy, and money, and he was a constant planning distraction due to his inability to play.
I'm glad he's gone. And I always will be.
I'm glad he's gone. And I always will be.
Laughably early to judge this trade or call Grissom a "lemon." Anybody who's doing that is at least much of a fool as they think Breslow is.
Grissom may never be a good major leaguer, but giving up on him after an age 23 season with not one but two hamstring strains is pure silliness. The guy was a hitter at the major league level at the age of 21 and I will be shocked if he doesn't hit again.
Good for Sale. He's a maniac, I'm not surprised he's succeeding again.
Grissom may never be a good major leaguer, but giving up on him after an age 23 season with not one but two hamstring strains is pure silliness. The guy was a hitter at the major league level at the age of 21 and I will be shocked if he doesn't hit again.
Good for Sale. He's a maniac, I'm not surprised he's succeeding again.
No, he traded a chronically broken, expensive pitcher for a cost controlled young player with upside. It's great Sale has remained health and somehow returned to form this year but no one should have reasonably expected that.
Best of luck to Sale. I'm glad he's gone.
No. I mean if Giolito and Grissom lead the 2025 sox to a title do we revisit it again? Im a pretty firm believer that trades, or signings for that should be (mostly) judged at the time of trade.
Like I said from the start you "objectively" have to. Nothing about what you just posted there coming off as being objective to me.
At the end of the day the trade is what it is. If ends up Breslow traded away the 2024 Cy Young award winner for a non-prospect that ends up amounting to a next to nothing value a year from now...it was a bad and terrible trade for us no matter how you want to dress it up.
The bolded is why I prefer to judge trades as much as possible at time of trade...if he ends up winning 2 MVPs in a row for the red sox in 28/29 do we revisit whether the trade was a win or a loss again? We traded an aging pitcher who hadn't contributed positively to the team in a few years for a cost controlled position player who had already produced at the age of 21 at the major league level. It was a good move. Good for Sale for turning back the clock and staying healthy.
We've certainly been in Baseball God Timeout for three years. I guess the 2021 ALDS pushed our karma over the edge, after 17 good years.
Unoriginal take: the trade seemed like a good enough idea at the time, with risks and benefits on both sides.They probably weren't sold on contention this year so they opted for years of control, as it seems like they always do. To be clear, it SUCKS in hindsight. But that is a lot of hindsight.
Is it not equally laughable to more or less ignore the outcome data we already have here? Absolutely nothing wrong imo with openly acknowledging the early grade on this is currently projecting out to look really bad.