Article: Two Years Later, the Chris Sale-Vaughn Grissom Trade Continues to Haunt Craig Breslow

[Nick John]

“I don’t really expect much more opportunity here just because decisions that were made were made, and it kind of didn't involve me. I mean, all those decisions, they make sense in a way, but I guess it sucks a little bit.” That was a quote from Vaughn Grissom at the end of July to MassLive’s Katie Morrison-O’Day.

Anyone who watches baseball knows that organizational plans and roster construction can change in the blink of an eye. Players know the same fact all too well. At one point in time, you're viewed as the shortstop of the future, and in the next, you're shipped off to a new team, learning a new position and hoping to become a starter for that new organization that believes in you.

That's the story of Vaughn Grissom. Drafted in the 11th round of the 2019 draft by the Atlanta Braves, Grissom rose up their prospect rankings and looked to be their shortstop once Dansby Swanson left for the Chicago Cubs. Grissom, however, did not claim that role for himself, instead losing the job to Orlando Arcia despite having a respectable showing in 2022.

Grissom would go on to spend the majority of 2023 in Triple-A while Arcia became an All-Star, but the talent that once made him a top prospect was still there.

That was when the Red Sox came into Grissom’s life. Looking to move on from oft-injured left-hander Chris Sale, a deal was struck between Boston and Atlanta where the two clubs swapped Sale and Grissom. The Red Sox, however, didn't need Grissom to play shortstop, as they already had Trevor Story to man the position. Instead, they imagined him as their second baseman after a 2023 season in which that position failed to consistently offer impact on both sides of the ball.

That was unfortunately the peak of Grissom’s time with Boston—before he even stepped foot on the field. The young infielder would end up pulling his hamstring in spring training and miss the start of the season. An illness sapped his strength and left him a shell of his usual self, and once he seemed to be turning a corner, Grissom wound up injured once more with a hamstring strain in his opposite leg in June. The infielder would end up spending the majority of 2024 between Triple-A Worcester and the injured list. All of this happened while visions for the infield were quickly changing.

Offseason addition Romy González was proving to be quite valuable to the team, while top prospects Kristian Campbell and Marcelo Mayer had fans and the organization alike imagining the duo in Boston. Grissom was quickly becoming the odd man out in Boston's plans after just a single season. To make matters worse, Sale was having not just an All-Star season in Atlanta, but one that would eventually win him a Cy Young award while helping the Braves make the playoffs. The Red Sox, on the other hand, were in need of major league quality starting pitching as they fell out of the playoff race.

To say the trade was a disaster then was premature; Grissom had been affected by one ailment after another for the majority of the season. He was still young, entering the 2025 season at the age of 24. The deal could still potentially work out.

Grissom showed up to spring training in a better condition than he ended 2024 in. The muscle he lost from his bout with illness had been added back and then some. Still, he failed to make the Opening Day roster, instead being sent to Triple-A once more as the club appeared to favor Campbell over him at second base. It was clear he had been leaped on the organizational depth chart.

Grissom took the demotion as a pro, heading to Worcester and playing his best every day despite seeing the Red Sox promote other infielders over him. Grissom learned some third base and first base as both Triston Casas and Alex Bergman missed time, but instead saw players such as Nick Sogard and Abraham Toro get the nod over him for big league call-ups.

The writing was on the wall for Grissom, but he continued to work hard until an injury sent him to the injured list in August. The Red Sox would transfer him to the 60-Day IL in September, officially ending his season without making an appearance in Boston. Now, it seems like his days with the franchise may be numbered. Despite a year in which Grissom hit .270/.342/.441 with 24 doubles, 13 home runs, 48 RBIs and nine stolen bases in 96 games, he was never considered for a promotion to Boston despite several stretches where the big league club could have benefited from an offensive injection.

One thing is certain: The Red Sox could have looked like a different team these last two seasons if they had a healthy Sale in the rotation. In 48 starts since being traded to Atlanta, Sale is 23-8 with a 2.37 ERA in 292 2/3 innings pitched. He also struck out 375 batters in that span while making two All-Star teams. Grissom, on the other hand, has a career stat line of .190/.246/.219 with three doubles and six RBIs in 31 games with Boston in 2024. Things really didn't work out for the Red Sox.

Despite the situation he found himself in, Grissom worked hard until the end, though his recent comments paint the picture of a player seeking his way out of town. Grissom is under contract for four more seasons, one at league minimum and then three arbitration years. The major issue facing Grissom and the Sox right now is he's out of minor league options. Should Grissom be on the roster by the end of the offseason, his back will be up against the wall and he'll have to fight even harder than before to justify being on the active roster.

Only time will tell how this trade will look when it's all done, but for now, it's looking like the Braves got a perineal All-Star and Cy Young candidate for nothing more than a disgruntled former prospect.

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[Duran Is The Man]

you forgot to note that to make matters even worse, the geniuses in the Sox front office also paid $17 million of Sale's salary for his first year in Atlanta. so.....think about this: Brezlow has traded Sale and Devers for nothing. a monkey could do a better job than these clowns.

[Bellhorn04]

Craig needs a sign on his wall that reads:

"DO NOT TRADE STARTING PITCHERS EVER AGAIN."

[notin]

36 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Craig needs a sign on his wall that reads:

"DO NOT TRADE STARTING PITCHERS EVER AGAIN."

Just starting pitchers?  Imagine if he had unloaded Story this off-season…

[Maxbialystock]

In retrospect, it's pretty awful, I agree.  But, when it happened, I think most people on Talksox were happy to see the back of Chris Sale.  After two excellent seasons in 2017 and 2018, the wheels came off in 2019.  indeed, despite Sale's terrific ERA in 2018, he only pitched 158 innings.  in 2019 it was 147 with an ERA of 4.40.  Then came tommy john surgery which caused Sale to miss the lost season of 2020--great timing!.  But then he basically missed 2021 and 2022 with a combined 48 IP.  In 2023, he pitched 103 innings, but his ERA was 4.30, about the same as his 4.40 in 2019.  

No way, no how do I think Grissom was intended as a meaningful trade for Sale.  He had played just 64 games for the Braves in 2022 and 2023 combined and his WAR in 2023 was -0.7.   

Yes, the Sox gave $17M to the Braves to pay Sale's 2024 salary, but that was because Sale wanted a 3 year deal after the 2023 season,   The Braves agreed to do so.  At that point, the Sox (Breslow) decided "good riddance" and agreed to the $17M while the Braves are now paying Sale $38M for this year and next.  

The simple fact is that the Braves saw something in Sale's 2023 season that the Sox did not.  They also found it easy to ignore 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 because of the elbow and bike-riding injuries.  The Sox, on the other hand, agonized over those same 4 seasons because they were paying Sale a lot of money. (which was actually chump change by today's standards).  

And this.  Tommy John surgery is insanely popular these days because it doesn't just fix the elbow, it makes it stronger.  So 2023 was Sale's first real season after TJ, and the Braves thought they saw the good Sale emerging even though he was 34.  The Sox thought exactly the opposite.  They thought "older is never better when you're over 30."  

 

 

 

[TedYazPapiMookie]

Breslow has two big blemishes on his trading record.

1 - Sale and $17 Million for Grissom 

2 - Priester for Rodrguez, Holobetz and Marcus Phillips.

His Devers trade was by far the best trade he's made as the results show (addition through subtraction) 

$260 Million over 8 years and the loss of a disgruntled Primadona was HUGE.  If anyone in the trade adds value in the future, it's icing on the cake.

The Crochet deal was a big add and a big loss at the same time.  Crochet outweighs the players given up in the deal in 2025 but time will tell if guys like Teel will end up being perennial all-stars so Breslow should have insisted on the injury prone Mayer over Teel.  Braden Montgomery could come back to haunt Breslow as well.  Even Meidroth proved to be a valuable player who outperformed Mayer in the minors and once again in his rookie season with a 1.7 WAR while hitting .267 with an OPS of .682 in 114 games compared to Mayer who with a 0.2 WAR while hitting .228 with an OPS of .674 in 44 games due to injuries just like his previous 3 years in the minors.

The Breslow's performance has been far better than the worthless Bloom and far worse than the legendary Dombrowski thanks to the balance of good and bad moves specifically in his trading.  Breslow's shortcoming as a new GM is that he didn't stand-up for himself and fire Cora so he could start with a clean slate of his own guys and be held accountable for any success.  Now he's struggling with a manager who can't successfully close-out seasons, who in 6 seasons doesn't seem to be improving in any of the key aspects of being a manager including line-up construction, in game situations and the timing of resting his top players.  The clubhouse also seems to let down in September every year under Cora with the possible exception of 2021 when team luck was at a maximum.

I give Breslow an overall thumbs up but hiring another layer of management seems completely redundant and a waste of money.  Maybe he's been asked to give one of the worthless execs a new shiny title to keep them happy like they have done so often in the past, but there is absolutely no need to hire another GM.  Doesn't the organization have enough executive vice presidents gathering dust to fill a bank (where titles are also meaningless)?  Or is this Breslow's chance to get everything he wants in a politically correct way by moving Cora to GM and hiring his own manager and then treating Cora like Andy Griffin treated Barney Fife and only let Cora have one bullet and hope he doesn't shoot himself in the foot?  Now that would make sense.

 

[moonslav59]

There was some logic to the trade, even if you disagreed with it on day one.

2B had been and still is a big issue on this team. Grissom looked like the best option we had, at the time. The Sale injury history has been well documented and has continued in ATL. Yes, paying $17M sucked, but we should look at the budget JH established and figure the $10M "saved" was used toward paying for part of Gio's deal or some other contract we added, like Tyler O'Neill.

When you look at the sheer volume of additions and subtractions Brez has made in just over 2 years, one should expect at least a couple mistakes. The Sale trade was a doozy, in hindsight, and hats off to those who thought it was on day one. The Buehler signing was another one, and at a cost of the Kluber and Richards signings combined. I guess we could call the Hendriks' signing a bust, too, but $10M can only be viewed in a lesser spotlight. Some point to the non-deadline deals as major blunders or just plain bad choices. IMO, the 2024 moves were all that was called for, and all but Jansen came through with any value. This year, I do agree we should have done more than M & M and later Lowe, but some of the massive overpays made at the deadline have looked pretty bad, so far. Of course we could cherry-pick Josh Naylor and wonder, "What if," but his .800 OPS with SEA is not a great deal better than Lowe's .784. (The HRs and RBIs are, though.) The Priester deal ha sucked, but how many of us really thought we let one slip away, when the deal was made?

I feel like the Brez plan was to build rotation depth over the winter to point where no deadline deals would be needed and the excess could be used to fill the pen needs most of us felt was our biggest weakness going into 2025. It was not a big bat or another ace starter.

Brez met one major need with the Bregman signing- actually two (a RHB and 3B D.) That was shocking after many of us felt the Soto run was just for show.

He quietly filled our great need at back-up catcher by acquiring a FT catcher for a AA arm.

His 2024 Gio signing finally came through.

Romy off waivers was the type of deal we hired Bloom to make, but saw so little of. The guy is now 8th in team PAs and should pass Devers by year's end. He is no longer a journeyman/platoon profile. He's a FT'er who can play 1B, 2B and maybe 3B/SS.

The Chapman signing was the big kicker, and many of us, including me felt that neglecting the pen was his biggest winter mistake. You don't hear as much hindsight judging on that move as we do for Sale, Buehler and the non deadline moves, do we?

The Wilson signing looked like a near joke. Deals made the year(s) before for Slaten, Fitts, Weissert and a few others helped, this year, although the Slaten injury hurt. Even scrub deals like Toro and Eaton have helped.

Perhaps most important of all was the Crochet trade. No discussion is needed on this deal.

To me, other than the Crochet and Chapman deals, his work transforming the farm pitching has been a huge plus that will pay dividends for years to come.

IMO, Brez has been a big overall plus. Our pitching looks strong and deep and most are controlled for years to come. Our D is greatly improved. While our offense lacks the big bopper, like Devers, it is deep and pretty strong. No other team has had a better bottom of the order than us, and that is not easy, when you figure we lost an .820+ hitting 1Bman for 5 months, our best batter (Devers) for 4 months, Bregman & Abreu for over a month and Anthony and Mayer for most of the season. I'm not blaming injuries and the Devers trade, but rather pointing out  that this team still excelled in the batting slots 5-9, despite all these losses. The everyday player team control years is the envy of every MLB team- only Bregman & Refsnyder lose or may lose team control, this winter, on the line-up side of the roster.

Again, we lack the superstar or two that our past ring teams always had, but we have a lot of players who are expected to be pretty good to very good players, going forward:

Anthony, Mayer, Narvaez and maybe Campbell.

Duran, Story, Abreu and maybe Rafaela.

Role players like Romy, Eaton, Sogard, Wong and maybe a resurgence by Yoshida or Casas.

We have a few farm hands looking to make an impact in 2026 or maybe 2027: Jh Garcia, Arias and maybe Romero or Jo Garcia.

I like the way our future is lining up. I thank Brez for much of that.

[notin]

2 hours ago, Maxbialystock said:

In retrospect, it's pretty awful, I agree.  But, when it happened, I think most people on Talksox were happy to see the back of Chris Sale.  After two excellent seasons in 2017 and 2018, the wheels came off in 2019.  indeed, despite Sale's terrific ERA in 2018, he only pitched 158 innings.  in 2019 it was 147 with an ERA of 4.40.  Then came tommy john surgery which caused Sale to miss the lost season of 2020--great timing!.  But then he basically missed 2021 and 2022 with a combined 48 IP.  In 2023, he pitched 103 innings, but his ERA was 4.30, about the same as his 4.40 in 2019.  

No way, no how do I think Grissom was intended as a meaningful trade for Sale.  He had played just 64 games for the Braves in 2022 and 2023 combined and his WAR in 2023 was -0.7.   

Yes, the Sox gave $17M to the Braves to pay Sale's 2024 salary, but that was because Sale wanted a 3 year deal after the 2023 season,   The Braves agreed to do so.  At that point, the Sox (Breslow) decided "good riddance" and agreed to the $17M while the Braves are now paying Sale $38M for this year and next.  

The simple fact is that the Braves saw something in Sale's 2023 season that the Sox did not.  They also found it easy to ignore 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 because of the elbow and bike-riding injuries.  The Sox, on the other hand, agonized over those same 4 seasons because they were paying Sale a lot of money. (which was actually chump change by today's standards).  

And this.  Tommy John surgery is insanely popular these days because it doesn't just fix the elbow, it makes it stronger.  So 2023 was Sale's first real season after TJ, and the Braves thought they saw the good Sale emerging even though he was 34.  The Sox thought exactly the opposite.  They thought "older is never better when you're over 30."  

 

 

 

From 2020 through 2023, the rhetoric was “you can’t count on Sale.”  But once he got traded, it suddenly morphed into “they should have counted on Sale.”  
 

Not sure why anyone thinks it’s so painfully obvious Sale was going to be the first starting pitcher to accrue more WAR at age 35 than he did from ages 29 through 34 combined.  But if Sale had stayed and flipped again, folks would have been all over Breslow for NOT trading him, just like they were when Bloom didn’t trade him to Texas in 2022.

Sometimes it feels like people don’t want smart CBOs or crafty CBOs; they want psychics…

[moonslav59]

1 minute ago, notin said:

From 2020 through 2023, the rhetoric was “you can’t count on Sale.”  But once he got traded, it suddenly morphed into “they should have counted on Sale.”  
 

Not sure why anyone thinks it’s so painfully obvious Sale was going to be the first starting pitcher to accrue more WAR at age 35 than he did from ages 29 through 34 combined.  But if Sale had stayed and flipped again, folks would have been all over Breslow for NOT trading him, just like they were when Bloom didn’t trade him to Texas in 2022.

Sometimes it feels like people don’t want smart CBOs or crafty CBOs; they want psychics…

They want lucky CBOs.

[notin]

3 minutes ago, moonslav59 said:

They want lucky CBOs.

No.  In fact, fans who do not like a CBO excuse away any good move he makes as “lucky” or it “fell into his lap.”  “Luck” is an excuse to justify further criticism…

[moonslav59]

5 minutes ago, notin said:

No.  In fact, fans who do not like a CBO excuse away any good move he makes as “lucky” or it “fell into his lap.”  “Luck” is an excuse to justify further criticism…

Of course, had we kept Sale and he won the Cy Young w BOS, they would not have viewed it as luck. Had Priester sucked w MIL, they'd have just said, "Meh." Had Buehler pitched well, they'd have said "About time."

Was Matz really a better trade than the Luis Garcia or Lucas Sims trades? Or was some luck involved?

When Brez made a good signing, like Bregman, they said, "He fell into his lap." The Crochet trade was a "no brainer." They Anthony, Mayer and Campbell drafts were, too. Very little mention of the Narvaez, Slaten or Fitts/Weisert trades by the Brez Gloomers. Maybe they see those deals as being lucky. How about the O'Neill trade and non re-sign? Probably just lucky, right? We sure heard about dumping Renfroe by Bloom.

[Jasonbay44]

I thought the trade was bad at the time and was pretty vocal about it for a few reasons.

The Red Sox needed starting pitching and while I’m aware Sale was an injury risk, they were paying his salary to play for another team anyway, at that point just keep him.

I also wasn’t a big fan of Grissom, mainly because he seemed pretty bad defensively and didn’t really have a position he was good at. 
 

it seemed bad at the time and aged even worse 

[moonslav59]

2 hours ago, Jasonbay44 said:

I thought the trade was bad at the time and was pretty vocal about it for a few reasons.

The Red Sox needed starting pitching and while I’m aware Sale was an injury risk, they were paying his salary to play for another team anyway, at that point just keep him.

I also wasn’t a big fan of Grissom, mainly because he seemed pretty bad defensively and didn’t really have a position he was good at. 
it seemed bad at the time and aged even worse 

I had hopes Grissom, who looked below average at SS could maybe be average at 2B on D. Boy was I wrong.

I was Chris Freakin' Sale's biggest fan, but 5 years of letdowns, along with watching countless other pitchers coming off injuries fail, one after another, broke my camel's back.

I had hopes the Gio signing might make up for some of the loss, and he seemed like a safe bet for 28+ starts, however, I never expected he'd be the only SP'er we added.

I can see why several posters disliked or even hated the deal on day one. It's always a risk trading away a CYA pitcher, but at his age, the risk seemed minimal. Boy, was I wrong!

 

[drewski6]

Im not sure why this doesnt get spoken of, but Chris Sale has made 0 playoff starts for the Braves. Yes, he won the cy young and had a great year last year, helping the Braves reach the playoffs.  But he was unavailable in the playoffs because of an injury.  Granted they were sent home quick, and had they got through a round without him, he *might* have made a start in teh second round. 

This year, he did like 115 innings, got hurt again, and the braves will miss the playoffs.

I suspect that had he had the same 2 years here, we would have been frustrated having to plan our playoff rotation without him last year, and having him miss a large chunk of time this year.

He hasnt been available to the braves when theyve needed him the most.

[Kimmi]

On 9/20/2025 at 9:48 PM, Jasonbay44 said:

I thought the trade was bad at the time and was pretty vocal about it for a few reasons.

The Red Sox needed starting pitching and while I’m aware Sale was an injury risk, they were paying his salary to play for another team anyway, at that point just keep him.

I also wasn’t a big fan of Grissom, mainly because he seemed pretty bad defensively and didn’t really have a position he was good at. 
 

it seemed bad at the time and aged even worse 

I would not have traded Sale to get him, but I thought Grissom could end up being our long-term 2nd baseman, .  I really am puzzled by what happened to Grissom in our system.  

At any rate, it ended up being a really bad trade.