Based off of what we have seen the last couple years, I am confident the Red Sox can make literally anyone worse at defense.
Chris Sale (plus $17mil) traded to Atlanta for Vaughn Grissom
- Thread starter Bosoxman2004
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Exactly. Dan Syzmborski made a point like this. Note in the second tweet he’s not saying it’s a bad thing—and clearly ATL agrees https://x.com/dszymborski/status/1741187879198458361?s=46&t=1Z2_Xz2artz1_IpyD1F4_A
Also relevant that 2/3 of the best hitters on ATL’s likely playoff competition for the next few years in LAD and PHI are LHB
I wonder if Grissom is fielding at all over at shortstop right now. They have to at least be exploring that option with Story potentially out for an unknowable while? I suppose he could be worse than Pablo out there, but I have to think they're at least contemplating it.
Better option for the team defensively is probably Ceddanne or Pablo at SS, though.
Better option for the team defensively is probably Ceddanne or Pablo at SS, though.
During the course of 4 minor league seasons Grissom played 234 games at SS, starting 231 of them. I'll leave those who are better versed in such things to discuss how good of a SS he actually is.
@absintheofmalaise is our Braves expert here, and I think he's said in the past that Grissom is average at best
I mean functionally what is the difference from Chris Sale and Trevor Story?
Chris Sale actually had a few good seasons for the Red Sox and played apart in winning a WS here.
Story has, um, not.
He was also never bad. He was just hurt. Story wasn’t good when he was relatively healthy.
Grissom finally expected to make his season debut tonight.... Chris Sale will likely be injured the exact same moment, yeah? Anyhow..... assuming Grissom can stay healthy, the defense should be at least equal to what Valdez did- which was impressive knowing how terrible he was last season there- and the offense a significant improvement. I was expecting the opposite from Valdez, above average offensive production and terrible defense. The improvement at D and the fact that he has shown to have ML level bat skills will be good for his future though. Finally just excited to watch the guy who I hope will be the starter at 2B for the next 5 years or so
I guess after the bike incident, we can't rule anything out, but Sale made it through his last start unscathed and isn't scheduled to start again until Wednesday...against the Red Sox.
Maybe better for the following former Sox thread, but:
7 GS
42.2 IP
52 K : 8 BB
2.95 ERA
0.98 WHIP
Damn.
7 GS
42.2 IP
52 K : 8 BB
2.95 ERA
0.98 WHIP
Damn.
Sale has been great. It's a major bummer watching him mow us down, but I'm hoping Grissom will make us forget about him soon enough. The guy has done nothing but hit year-in, year-out, and it would really be nice to finally have someone who can solidify the position on offense if not on defense too (early returns there haven't been bad at all, I think).
And we're paying him $17 million to do it!
It might not be a great deal. (Edited to remove some personal commentary.) Not just for this year, but for next year. We had finally waited out the shitty part of Sale's contract and then got rid of it when it finally was a good deal. And paid $17 million to do it.
And for Grissom of course. So now, whatever, it becomes all about Grissom. I hope he pays it off.
I fully expected him to be really good for Atlanta. The key question was whether or not he’d stay healthy and the fact is, we are less than a month and a half into the season, so while it’s so far, so good, we all know how that can go with him.
And yet still…. I fully expect him to be healthy for them.
Sale made his 1st 11 starts last year. The quality of his pitching wasn't the impetus of the trade. Another thread talks about the various possible reasons for the "other" starters' improvements. No way to prove it, of course, but IMO, the lack of uncertainty around Sale has helped the likes of Crawford and Houck.
It's not a bad deal at all, they needed his roster spot and he was always injured. The uncertainly of his status every day was a problem and they solved it.
It’s pretty close to a perfect trade in that there’s no “winner”. Both teams addressed needs. Adding Grissom has made the uncertainty of Yorke, Meidroth and other 2B types that were being counted on as less urgent and possibly useful in a trade to address other lacking areas.
Braves are taking the bigger gamble, but not financially, that Sale finally gets healthy.
Long term “win” (if you must!) goes to the Sox…. Short term to the Braves…. But that’s exactly where each team needed help.
The Sox traded "out of" the 2024 window (not entirely but with this roster spot) and into a later window with Grissom, plus some cash to play with. They currently have one of the youngest rosters in all of baseball. It's no mystery what the plan is, nor is there any reason to think Sale would have had any role in it. The only way this deal isn't good for the Sox is if you think there's another young player who would have suited them better than Grissom, and could have been had for the same cost. Not very likely IMO.
And to put a finer point on it - a player that they could have ID'd and traded for this past off-season.
They essentially swapped Sale’s spot with Giolito. If they don’t sign Giolito, they almost certainly don’t trade Sale. So far that swap isn’t exactly working out for the Red Sox.
Giolito signed after New Years Day.
Sale got traded the previous week.
They traded Sale because they no longer wanted to have the uncertainty of depending on a guy who was undependable. (Much like the reason they traded Nomar, IMO.)
I imagine the implication is that Giolito hasn't thrown a pitch yet and won't until at least next season.
Odds are pretty good that they knew they had Giolito lined up when they pulled the trigger on the Sale deal. Ultimately though, I don't think GMs operate in that kind of a binary way, especially when it comes to pitchers. Giolito wasn't acquired specifically to replace Sale and Sale probably wasn't moved specifically to open a spot for Giolito. Both moves were made in an effort to improve the roster in general.
Giolito's signing took a little while to get officially announced, but it was reported by Passan as a done dea on Dec 29, while the Sale trade was reported the next day (Dec 30). So the timing is very consistent with the Sox trading Sale once they had Giolito in house.
View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1740868506432966830
I mean he officially didnt sign until the 3rd of January but the deal was announced on December 29th, one day before the Sale trade.
But, yes, the ’dependable’ guy they replaced Sale with is now out for the entire season with zero innings contributed. Almost like no pitcher is actually dependable because they are all always one pitch away from catastrophic injury.
My issue is about the timing of the trade not the trade itself. It looked like Sale was going have a relatively healthy year. Would it not have been optimal and perhaps brought back a better return if we moved him at the trade deadline?
What kind of better return could they have gotten than a highly touted 22-year-old who happened to play a position of need? To be honest, I think they got the best they were going to get for him because they traded him at a point where he was as valuable as he was going to get. I think the Braves wanted him because they felt like you did in that it looked like Sale was going to have a healthy year (or at least a healthy normal off-season). There's no better evidence of that than the fact that they more or less immediately signed him to an extension. Waiting until July brings the risk that either he gets hurt again or he's healthy but ineffective.
I haven't been a fan of a lot of our front office activity lately, but this seems like a total second guess. Sure, Sale has been great so far, but how anyone could say "it looked like Sale was going to have a relatively healthy year" after the last few seasons is beyond me. He hasn't even made it to this year's trade deadline yet. Let's see if that happens before we declare this a strategic blunder by Breslow.
You can say it the same way that you can say "Sale's departure cleared the way for Houck and Crawford to become not-jerked-around really good starters."
Yeah, not many horses left, are there? Phillies seem to have a couple in Wheeler and Nola. But as you say, it feels like they're all one pitch away now.
Yeah, it's hard to keep our biases out of our hypothetical statements.
The only thing I object to in statements about this trade are the ones that imply that it can't possibly be a bad one for the Red Sox.
I don’t buy that because Houck and Crawford were both in the rotation last year with Chris Sale and they were already minus guys like Kluber and Paxton. He wouldn’t be blocking them in any way. They’d still be dong their thing only there’s a decent chance Bailey has Sale looking like 2017 Sale out there too and what a guy to front this rotation.
I'll die on my post-hoc hill, with my hindsight glasses, you die on yours. Depending on Chris Sale to "front" a rotation in 2024 would have been insanity. Even the Braves aren't doing that.
Bailey is a pitching coach, not a doctor.
I guess before the trade was made it was not yet evident the plan was to close (or at least lower) the window on 2024. I still find the overall plan quite mysterious, in part because I was so dead wrong on the plan for this year.
And since the list of things that "may" happen is virtually infinite, one would never be wrong and the "sports" "talk" radio hot take machine is fueled.
My guess is that the people who make these decisions live in a world more governed by "probably," than "may." That's how I usually look at it, too. Sale may go on the IL tomorrow. Grissom may go to 10 all-star games or get traded for someone who does.
In what world is this a "bad" trade? Many of us were resigned to the idea that the Red Sox wouldn't be a competitive baseball team this year regardless of Sale. Trading him for Grissom is a good move. The only thing you can measure this trade is against possible other returns, but we don't know what those were so it's impossible to judge. Rather, you have the evaluate the trade for what it was in the abstract: an oft-injured, 35 year old pitcher that has topped 100 innings once in since 2019 (102.2 in 2024) for a 45 FV MLB-ready infielder with years of controls and options at a weak position. I don't know how much better you can reasonably expect to do.
I totally agree with the bolded "at the time" point.
I also think it's fair to "take a look back" at some point that isn't ONE MONTH into the season to see "how it worked out."
How it "might work out" if x, y, or z happens seems to be a waste of time, given the nearly infinite possibilities.
OK, well, for those who were resigned from the outset to 2024 being another non-competitive season, it makes the trade less likely to have a negative impact. Being resigned to non-competitive puts a different slant on everything.
I think it's a very good trade and I hope Sale shines for the Braves. I want teams to believe trading with Breslow yields excellent results. But we got someone who probability stays as a Major League starter with an upside of occasional All Star, good hit, okay glove, who plays 120+ games a season with 6 years of control. I think it would have been a good trade even if Sale is perfectly healthy because he was in his last year. I think his recent injury history made the trade much more palatable to the Johnny from Burger King crowd (not that Breslow is overly concerned with that).