How Red Sox's Sonny Gray Trade May Have Revealed Boston's Offseason Strategy

The Major League Baseball offseason is a long chess game, and trading for Sonny Gray was just one big move by the Boston Red Sox.

Acquiring Gray, giving up two prospects, and accepting a $21 million collective bargaining tax hit for a three-time All-Star pitcher with better peripheral stats than actual numbers is certainly an interesting first move. It could lead Boston down all sorts of divergent paths, which depend equally on the money they're authorized to hand out and the players and teams they can work deals with.

So in the grand scheme of things, what did the Red Sox's trade for Gray reveal about how they'll attack the rest of the offseason? The simplest answer is that we don't yet know the full answer.

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What Red Sox might be doing by acquiring Gray

One suggestion, which Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic pointed out during his appearance on the "Foul Territory" live stream on Tuesday, is that the Red Sox are pivoting away from the free-agent pitching market by trading for Gray, possibly signaling a focus on bats on the open market.

"I'm not sure the Red Sox did well enough, but maybe they see this differently," Rosenthal said. "Maybe they say, 'You know what? We're not doing $150 million to Dylan Cease or Framber Valdez or Ranger Suárez or (Tatsuya) Imai. No, let's do one year for Sonny Gray, do some other things to upgrade offensively, maybe get another lesser starter as well.'

"I don't know what they're thinking exactly, but it was an interesting choice to me, the one that they made."

It's not obvious how much more, but the Red Sox definitely have money left to spend thanks to the $20 million the Cardinals ate on Gray's deal. At the very least, one would think they can afford either a new contract for Alex Bregman or another free agent of similar value (think Pete Alonso, Kyle Schwarber) -- if they can convince those free agents to sign in Boston.

It's worth noting as well that $21 million is a bit less than the Red Sox would have paid Lucas Giolito to return on the qualifying offer, so what the Red Sox may be signaling here is that they feel this move is simply the best they could have done to shore up the middle of the rotation, but that more trades (Joe Ryan? Freddy Peralta?) could still be on the club's radar.

More MLB: Red Sox's Sonny Gray Trade Could Have Harsh Alex Bregman Consequences, Per Insider