Chris Sale Trade Brings Layered Impact To Red Sox Before Showdown

The December 2023 trade of Chris Sale from the Boston Red Sox to the Atlanta Braves turned heads at the time, though it made sense for the clubs involved.

Atlanta added a former All-Star who may have just needed a change of scenery to return to healthy and his ace-level potential. The Red Sox found a potential second baseman of the future in Vaughn Grissom — a talented young player with nowhere to go in Atlanta’s stacked infield.

On May 8, it’s far too early to judge the trade’s winner, especially given that Grissom just made his Red Sox debut in the last week following a spring training injury. However, that’s not to say that impacts from the deal aren’t already on full display.

That’s certainly the case for Sale, who finds himself on a contending team and enjoying the results of a healthy opportunity. Sale is 4-1 through six starts with a 3.44 ERA, 44 strikeouts and just seven walks. His hard fastball and patented slider returned to form as the southpaw has emerged as a key piece of the Braves rotation.

As for Grissom, the hope for Boston remains the same: that the infielder finally fills a nearly seven-void at second base, left behind by the end of Dustin Pedroia’s time as a healthy everyday player. The 23-year-old showed he can hit with a massive 2023 season in Triple-A, though time will be needed to fine-tune defensive details and offensive consistency at the big-league level for the Red Sox.

Beyond those two players, the Red Sox-Braves swap forced others to step up. The starting rotation has been the ultimate conversation in Boston dating back to the end of last season, where the narrative spread of the ballclub needing multiple external additions. That remained the case even after Boston traded Sale. How could a rotation that needed so much respond without its most talented arm across a six-season tenure with the Red Sox?

Well, Boston has responded, and then some in a resounding way, with the help of a brand-new pitching regime around the organization under Craig Breslow and Andrew Bailey.

While the Red Sox still have work to do to contend as they teeter near the .500 mark, Boston’s starting rotation deserves more attention on a national level. Despite the absence of nearly all five expected arms in the Opening Day rotation, Red Sox starters have posted an ERA circling around 2.00 while leading MLB in total staff ERA. That production makes the Sale trade far less dooming for those on the mound that it may have in the immediate time after the deal.

Sale faces the Red Sox for the first time since the trade in Atlanta on Wednesday night.