Braves have already won the Chris Sale trade

When the Braves traded Vaughn Grissom for Chris Sale, it was met with criticism.

Hell, I just wrote about a Deadspin blog that was titled Atlanta Braves trade for washed-up pitcher. 

“The 34-year-old lefty has looked cooked. He’s either hurt — he only made two starts last season, and just nine in 2021— or ineffective, pitching to a 4.30 ERA in 20 starts this year,” Mackenzie Meaney wrote.

Sale had battled injuries for the better part of four seasons from 2019 to 2022, but he was able to enter last offseason healthy after pitching over 100 innings for the first time since that 2019 campaign. Though the surface level numbers weren’t impressive, as Meaney pointed out, Sale’s stuff was still elite, evident in his 11.0 K/9, and his 3.80 FIP suggested that 4.30 ERA was a bit inflated.

Alex Anthopoulos took a gamble, trading away a young player in Vaughn Grissom, who had no viable role in Atlanta, and the club’s GM was rewarded. Chris Sale turned in the best season of his career, winning the National League Triple Crown for the first time since Clayton Kershaw did so more than a decade ago, leading the NL with 18 wins, a 2.38 ERA, and 225 strikeouts.

No matter what Grissom does in Boston, the Braves have won the Chris Sale trade, but the Red Sox certainly aren’t happy with the early returns. Grissom spent much of the 2024 campaign injured, appearing in just 31 major league games and 55 minor league games.

While he did struggle in those 31 games, batting .190 with a .465 OPS., he left a good taste in the mouths of Sox fans. Over the final eight games, as Boston pushed for a Wild Card spot, Vaughn Grissom slashed .333/.370/.417.

Grissom is a candidate for the starting job at second base next season, and it’s far too early to declare the Red Sox losers of this trade, but it’s not too early to dub the Braves winners. They’ve already gotten more out of Chris Sale than they would have ever gotten out of Vaughn Grissom due to positional concerns.

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Photographer: Jeff Robinson/Icon Sportswire

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