Red Sox Earn Surprising Praise For Chris Sale Trade Ahead Of Braves Showdown

Boston Red Sox fans couldn't have been more conflicted watching Chris Sale win the Cy Young Award in 2024.

On one hand, it was remarkable to see a star who had spent the last five years of his Red Sox contract battling through injuries stay healthy for a full year and accomplish something he'd never done in his brilliant career. On the other, he was playing for the wrong team.

The Red Sox traded Sale to the Atlanta Braves before the 2024 season for infielder Vaughn Grissom, who was supposed to be the second baseman of the future in Boston. Given that Grissom has landed in Triple-A after batting .190 in a small big-league sample last year, the deal has so far been catastrophic.

Does that mean that the Red Sox shouldn't have made the Sale trade, though? One baseball writer is pushing back against that notion as Sale gets ready to pitch at Fenway Park on Friday night for the first time since the deal.

On Friday, Brady Farkas of Fastball on SI called the Sale deal "the right decision" for Boston at the time, even though it has worked out about as poorly as a trade could possibly work out in the first year and a quarter thereafter.

"Fact 1: The deal has not worked out for Boston, as Sale won the National League Cy Young Award last season," Farkas wrote. "Fact 2: The Red Sox still made the right decision and Craig Breslow executed the right process.

"Grissom is a former Top 100 prospect who came with six years of team control... Unfortunately, sickness in spring training last year set him way back and he never really got going. Again, the deal hasn't worked out in the way that the Red Sox would have wanted, but that doesn't mean it was the wrong deal to make."

Sale was on the books for $27.5 million last season, of which Boston paid $17 million even after the trade. Atlanta extended him for 2025 for $22 million before he threw a pitch, and also added a 2026 club option for $18 million.

Now, the Red Sox have a new lefty ace in Garrett Crochet, a move they may not have felt empowered to make if they still had Sale on the payroll. And the two will appropriately square off on Friday night, with both teams needing to pile up wins after mediocre starts.