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.
