To date, the Chris Sale-Vaughn Grissom trade has been a bust for Red Sox, but injuries have a lot to do with that - The Boston Globe (2024)

While the Sox accepted the possibility that the deal would hurt in 2024, it was difficult to anticipate the extent to which it would impact them — or the extent to which they would harbor regrets this season.

Sale has been consistently healthy for the first time in years. And taking every turn of the rotation, he has been as valuable as nearly any pitcher in baseball, a force who has been a key contributor in Atlanta’s position as a wild-card contender.

The Sox rotation has held its own. It had a 3.84 ERA entering Friday (eighth best in the big leagues), anchored by All-Star Tanner Houck. Still, the fact that they felt urgency to trade for James Paxton was an acknowledgement of a hole — one that wouldn’t have existed with the 2024 version of Sale.

“I think when we traded Sale, it was not because we did not think he had the ability to pitch at an elite level when he was on the field,” Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said recently. “He has been an All-Star eight times, he’s a Cy Young-caliber pitcher, and might be the Cy Young winner this year. He’s a really good pitcher.”

If Grissom had been performing as expected, and if the addition of Lucas Giolito one day before the Sale swap had worked out, it would have made Sale’s resurgence a bit easier to stomach.

Instead, Giolito required season-ending elbow surgery in spring training. Grissom has missed most of the year rehabbing from injuries to both hamstrings, and when he was on the field, thanks in part to a virus that resulted in the loss of 14 pounds, he struggled to a .148/.207/.160 line, unable to show the offensive skill set that had convinced the Sox to trade for him.

“We haven’t seen the best of Vaughn Grissom,” manager Alex Cora has said repeatedly.

With Grissom missing most of the year and struggling when healthy, second base has been a black hole. Sox second basem*n have the lowest batting average (.191), on-base percentage (.246), and OPS (.523) in baseball while posting the second-lowest slugging mark (.279). The .523 OPS would be the worst by the Red Sox at any non-pitching position since 1993, when the catchers combined for a .520 mark.

The Sox entered the weekend with a 57-50 record, two games behind the Twins and 2½ behind the Royals for the second and third wild-card spots. It’s not hard to imagine those standings looking different if Sale had been a contributor or if the second basem*n hadn’t struggled so severely.

“At the time that we made that, we were looking to think about building for the future and get Vaughn, who can play second base every day and had significantly more control,” Breslow said. “To date, obviously Vaughn hasn’t been on the field. He’s getting healthy now, he’s playing, and we’ve identified a good development plan for him.”

Grissom offered a glimpse of promise Wednesday in Triple A. He hit his first homer of the year (major or minor league), driving a fastball 399 feet — 25 feet farther than he’d hit a ball this season. As difficult as his transition to Boston has been, there’s still a possibility that he can help the team down the stretch.

“Obviously we’ll see how the health comes and how he progresses from a baseball perspective,” said Breslow. “But I don’t think that anything has happened to change how we think about and what we believe he’s capable of, simply because he’s been injured.”

That certainly is the Sox’ hope. But it doesn’t come with a guarantee. No trade decisions do, an uncomfortable fact that heads of baseball operations have to accept.

Breslow understood that the biggest trade of his first offseason with the Sox came with risk. So, too, did the paired moves to ship Alex Verdugo to the Yankees for three pitchers and to add Tyler O’Neill from the Cardinals a couple of weeks before the Sale-Grissom swap.

Breslow said of O’Neill, “He’s got such a presence in the middle of the lineup and he balances out some of the other lefthanded hitters. He’s been awesome. Obviously, very happy with how that’s turned out.”

To date, the Sox haven’t been able to say the same about the Sale-Grissom deal. They remain hopeful that time will alter the balance scale — certainly over the remaining five years in which Grissom remains under team control, and perhaps down the stretch this season.

“These trades hurt. Of course they do,” said Breslow. “It hurt when you made it, when you give up that kind of talent. But I think it would be unfair to make a conclusion about it right now.”

Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.