One of the lasting memories of the 2024 Boston Red Sox season will always be the trade that came before it.
At the turn of the calendar year, the Red Sox shipped longtime ace Chris Sale, who hadn’t pitched a full, healthy season in half a decade, to the Atlanta Braves for middle infield prospect Vaughn Grissom. To say the initial returns on the trade look bad would be a colossal understatement.
Sale is almost definitely going to win his first career Cy Young Award, while Grissom bounced between Major League Baseball and the minors all season long. Though Sale’s Red Sox contract was set to expire at the end of the 2024 season, a pitcher of his exact caliber would have been the difference between making the playoffs and missing out…