Vaughn Grissom Needs a Change of Scenery Already

Bleacher Report recently listed Vaughn Grissom as a prime candidate for a change of scenery. Honestly, they probably aren’t wrong. Grissom hasn’t lived up to the hopes the Red Sox front office put in him with they traded Chris Sale for him before the 2024 season. Grissom has looked overmatched at points, he’s struggled to stay healthy, and so far this spring he’s hitting a putrid .188. I wrote earlier about a potential budding competition for second base between Grissom and David Hamilton but since then, the Red Sox have featured Kristian Campbell almost exclusively at second, so it appears as if the competition is actually between Hamilton and Campbell. Where does this leave Grissom now, and how likely is it for a change of scenery during the 2025 season?

Both of those are fairly loaded questions, and the likely answer leaves the front office looking a bit foolish. I’m not questioning the Chris Sale trade. I firmly believe had he stayed in Boston that we wouldn’t have gotten the same season the Atlanta Braves did out of him. That being said, trading him for Grissom is major misstep Craig Breslow and company. In their defense, they likely had no idea Campbell would burst onto the scene in such a dramatic way in 2024, but trading someone like Sale for a quad-A player who will likely only see time in Boston during the 2025 season if several people get injured is the biggest black eye for Breslow so far.

As for a change of scenery, I suppose it’s possible but it’s going to take Breslow admitting he made a mistake with the original trade and selling Grissom for pennies on the dollar as part of a larger trade package. You’re not going to get any team to trade for Grissom as he currently stands. If he shows out in Worcester to begin the season, his value increases some, but other teams are going to be well aware of his shortcomings. Grissom appeared for a time to be the heir apparent to Dansby Swanson in Atlanta, so the Red Sox are now the second team to decide against him. You could see a team that's out of contention and looking to rebuild take a chance on him but a lot of those programs already have young shortstops and second basemen that profile to be more impactful than Grissom has been.

Unfortunately for Grissom, the Red Sox are much stronger up the middle on defense than they have been in previous years, and he’s failed to live up to the expectations of the trade that brought him to Boston. The early returns during spring training have been less than ideal. In the span of a year, Grissom has gone from being traded for the future Cy Young winner to an afterthought on a team focusing on a youth movement. He still has time to turn it around, but it’s becoming increasingly likely that his next opportunity will come somewhere other than Boston.