The 2016 Chris Sale trade looks like a huge win for the Boston Red Sox despite the left-hander’s 2019 struggles.
Not only did the Red Sox land an elite starting pitcher, who since has contributed to a World Series title. They also refused to deal away Rafael Devers despite the Chicago White Sox’s attempt to land the young slugger as part of the December 2016 swap.
Boston ultimately traded prospects Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Luis Alexander Basabe and Victor Diaz for Sale, who was coming off his fifth straight top-six finish in American League Cy Young voting. Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told NBC Sports Boston’s John Tomase this week he never really came close to including Devers in the trade despite the White Sox asking for the rising star.
“When they got into the Devers part of it, at that point, we were prepared to walk away,” Dombrowski said, per Tomase.
According to Dombrowski, the White Sox prioritized Moncada and Andrew Benintendi in trade talks. Moncada was considered one of the best prospects in baseball, while Benintendi flashed his potential down the stretch in 2016 and figured to hold a starting job at the big league level in 2017.
Devers, then 20 years old and coming off a productive season at High-A Salem, was a viable target for the White Sox. The Red Sox simply had no interest in sweetening the pot with another one of the league’s most coveted prospects.
“The reality is they either wanted Benintendi or Moncada as the No. 1 guy,” Dombrowski told Tomase. “Now Devers’ name came up after that, but it was clear that they wanted one or the other in order to start the conversation, and the next part of the conversation was Kopech.”
“We were already giving up Moncada or Benintendi and Kopech,” he added. “We knew that they liked those other guys so much, and we kept weighing it in or our mind and kept saying, if you have one of those two guys and Kopech, we didn’t think anyone could realistically match that deal. So we told them at that point we were not going to give up Devers. And then they came back to us with a couple of other names.”
In other words, the Red Sox called the White Sox’s bluff when Chicago general manager Rick Hahn seemingly implied he’d look elsewhere while trying to trade his ace. And it worked out in Boston’s favor, as the Red Sox acquired one of the best starting pitchers in Major League Baseball while keeping an up-and-coming farmhand who this season has developed into one of the game’s most feared hitters.
