Craig Breslow Responds To Vaughn Grissom-Chris Sale Whiff

The Boston Red Sox made an unlucky move ahead of the 2024 season.

At the time, the Red Sox had a real need at second base and traded the then-oft-injured Chris Sale to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for young infielder Vaughn Grissom. He flashed some massive upside with Atlanta, as shown by slashing .287/.339/.407 in his first 64 big league games across the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Boston flipped Sale for Grissom, but unfortunately things didn't work out in the club's favor.

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Grissom went on to play just 31 total games for Boston and Sale went on to win the 2024 National League Cy Young Award and thrive again in 2025. You can't predict health, but the move ended up being a whiff for the organization, which traded Grissom away this offseason already.

Boston missed on Vaughn Grissom

On Saturday, Alex Speier of the Boston Globe shared a column and Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow opened up about the move.

"You have to,” Breslow said to Speier when asked about evaluating the Grissom deal. “You have to take stock of the information that you had at the time that you made the decision and where that may have been inaccurate or incomplete, so that you avoid making similar decisions driven by similar circumstances in the future...That’s not to say that Vaughn won’t go on and have a successful major league career. Just, for the period that he was here … it didn’t work, and we have to recognize that. We have to understand what the information was that we had in front of us at the time, and we need to work through what drove that decision and where we could potentially get more information in the future and allow us to make better decisions...

"You have to avoid allowing a decision that didn’t work out exactly as you thought it would from becoming a deterrent to making additional trades in the future,” Breslow added. “Otherwise, you’re narrowing the paths to improving your roster.”

Boston turned to Kristian Campbell at second base at the beginning of the 2025 season and then had a revolving door at the position when he was sent down to the minors. If Alex Bregman re-signs, Marcelo Mayer would seemingly be the best option to take over the position. If Bregman doesn't re-sign, then second base is up in the air again.

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