Chaim!
The Red Sox made their first big move of the offseason today, as current CBO Craig Breslow made a deal with recently departed CBO Chaim Bloom, acquiring three-time All-Star and former Cy Young runner-up
Sonny Gray from the Cardinals in exchange for Richard Fitts and prospect Brandon Clarke (the #8 prospect in the system according to SoxProspects.com), and either a player to be named later or cash. Gray, who turned 36 two weeks ago, is owed $35 million plus a $5 million buyout for the final year his contract next season. But the Cardinals are eating $20 million of his salary, leaving the Sox on the hook for $20 million for the purposes of MLB’s competitive balance tax.
Let’s start here: this is a good move in a vacuum. Gray’s 5.89 strikeout-to-walk ratio was the fourth-best in all of baseball last year, trailing only Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, and Bryan Woo. His 3.6 fWAR last year would have easily been the second-best mark on the Red Sox staff. He’s a good pitcher who makes the Red Sox better and the Sox paid a perfectly reasonable price to get him. Richard Fitts had an ERA+ of just 83 last year, is not particularly young as he’s entering his age-26 season, and was no higher than on the Sox depth chart. If, as a team, you can’t risk trading away Richard Fitts, then you’ve got major problems; the worst part of losing him is that we’ll never find out whether his parents are totally clueless or the funniest goddamn people in the world.
Clarke is a slightly different story, as he’s a left-handed prospect who throws heat and was tabbed by some to have a breakout performance next year. But even still, he’s completed 0nly one season of single-A ball and is just as likely to end up as a reliever as he is a starter — if he ever makes it to the big leagues at all. Sure, there’s a chance that Clarke develops nicely and turns into an solid middle-of-the-rotation arm in 2029. But forgoing a chance to improve your big league roster because you want to hang on to someone like Brandon Clarke is, well, what Chaim Bloom would’ve done, and there’s a reason he was on the other side of this deal today.
But is this a good move in the context of the Red Sox 2025-26 offseason? That’s where things get a little more complicated.
As the whole world knows (because Craig Breslow told them) the Sox’ top priority coming into this season was acquiring a second stud pitcher, someone who, according to Breslow, “can pitch alongside or slot in behind Garrett and start a playoff game.” So is Gray that vaunted number two? It’s not all that hard to make the case that he is. As covered above, he posted an elite strikeout-to-walk ratio last season. Moreover, that 3.6 fWAR I mentioned was the 17th-best in baseball, better than big names like Dylan Cease, Jacob deGrom, and Joe Ryan. His 3.39 FIP was the 11th-best in baseball, better than Kevin Gausman, Bryan Woo, and Freddy Peralta. And his 10.1 strikeouts-per-nine were the 10th-best in baseball, besting Max Fried, Framber Valdez, and Hunter Brown.
But, for as many stats as you can find that make him look elite, you can find just as many red flags, too. His ERA+ was a below-league average 96 last year. The 25 homers he allowed would have led the 2025 Red Sox. And he was horrendous in his lone season in the AL East, as he put up a career-low ERA+ of 86 with the Yankees in 2018. If Breslow’s quote about finding someone who could pitch alongside Garrett Crochet made you think the Sox were going for something like the Randy Johnson-Curt Schilling one-two punch on the turn-of-the-century Diamondbacks, then this move probably feels underwhelming.
But, of course, the offseason is not over yet, giving this particular trade a kind of Schrodinger’s cat vibe. Is there a good move or a bad move in the box? We may not know for sure until we open it in Spring Training, when we see what the rest of the roster looks like. If Breslow adds still more punch to the rotation while improving the lineup, then we may look at this trade as a masterstroke, a move that gave the Sox an elite rotation at a reasonable price. But if this is it — or if the $20 million owed to Gray makes it harder to sign someone like Pete Alonso to anchor the lineup — then we might sound like the “books for Christmas” kid when we open the box down in Fort Myers in a few months: a 36-year old groundball pitcher who needs a strong right side of the infield? What the heck is that?
