San Francisco Giants Trade Away Promising Catcher to Boston Red Sox

The San Francisco Giants traded away a young catcher after recently designated him for assignment.
Robert Edwards-Imagn Images
In this story:

The San Francisco Giants have an agreement in place with the Boston Red Sox which will net the Giants more international bonus pool space.

According to a report from Hunter Noll of Beyond the Monster, San Francisco is sending the Red Sox catcher Blake Sabol in exchange for the bonus pool space and Sabol will have a spot on Boston's 40-man roster.

It's no surprise to see Sabol dealt from the Giants after the team designated him for assignment last week in order to make room for Justin Verlander, but he did have some promising appearances for San Francisco over the last two years.

After the Giants acquired Sabol from the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2022 Rule 5 Draft, he was locked into an Opening Day roster spot with the team in 2023 and played 110 games that season both at catcher and in the outfield. Before 2023, he had only ever played in 25 games at the Triple-A level, but would go on to have a fairly solid season nonetheless at the Major League level.

In those 110 games, Sabol hit .235 with 13 home runs, 44 RBIs, an OPS of .695, and an OPS+ of 92. In 2024 however, he was optioned back down to Triple-A where he did not perform quite as well and played in just 11 games for San Francisco while Patrick Bailey was recovering from injury.

In those 11 games however Sabol was even better than he was in 2023 with a .313 batting average and a .796 OPS with 10 hits in just 32 at bats.

The presence of Bailey blocked any sort of realistic path Sabol would have to pushing for the starting job behind the plate with the Giants, so seeing him traded is not exactly heartbreaking for fans, but it certainly would have been nice to see him get a full shot at proving why he should be an every day sort of player.

Chances are over the long term Bailey is going to be one of the better catchers in baseball, so holding onto Sabol would not have benefited either him or the team.

If it does prove to be the case that he continues to hit at a good level and get even better - Sabol just turned 27 years old earlier this month - San Francisco would likely wish they got more for him than just bonus pool money.

But at the very least, he becomes a career worth monitoring for Giants fans as Sabol tries to establish himself in Boston.


Published |Modified