Back in January 2024, I said — roughly 218 times to anyone who would listen, up to and including strangers in line at CVS — that there was nothing Chris Sale could do with the Atlanta Braves that would make me think the trade that sent him to Atlanta for Vaughn Grissom was a bad deal. Sale was a black cloud hovering over the entire organization, I said. The Red Sox needed to stop planning their rotation around him, I said. He was almost certainly done as an effective starting pitcher and the Red Sox were lucky to not only unload him for value, but for a player who would be be an above-average regular for years to come, I said.
I may have been wrong about the Chris Sale-Vaughn Grissom trade.
Today, the Red Sox traded Vaughn Grissom to Los Angeles Angles for single-A outfielder Isaiah Jackson, an eighth round draft pick this past summer and the 25th-ranked prospect in the poorly-rated Angels farm system.
We’ll have more on Jackson soon. But now it’s time to close the book on Vaughn Grissom’s time with the Red Sox and the Chris Sale trade in general. Sale has made 49 starts for Atlanta and posted an ERA+ of 168. He has won a Cy Young. He has led the league in pitching bWAR and posted 10.2 bWAR total in his time in Atlanta. In his time in Boston, Grissom finished at -0.2 bWAR. The decision tree that led to the Sale trade may or may not have been sound, but the Red Sox’ evaluation of Grisosm’s skills definitely was not.
Some trades take years to fully evaluate. But this one doesn’t. It will go down as one of the worst trades in Red Sox history.
