Against the wishes of nearly every Boston Red Sox fan, the team has been largely quiet this offseason, refusing to spend money like the big-market team that it is. In fact, the team’s biggest move was trading away one of its highest-paid players, Chris Sale, who was shipped off to the Atlanta Braves.

In hindsight, it looks like the worst trade in Red Sox history and vice versa for Atlanta. It was more one-sided than any other deal in recent memory. Sale seems to have the NL Cy Young Award in his pocket, the only question is whether he will win the pitching triple crown. Meanwhile, the player Boston got, Vaughn Grissom, has done next to nothing in a Red Sox jersey.

The young infielder has missed a lot of time due to injury, struggled in the 23 MLB games he appeared in, and has been playing in Triple-A since late July despite being healthy recently.

In hindsight, this is one of the worst deals in recent memory. Unfortunately, hindsight is always 20/20. The Red Sox deserve some forgiveness considering how much this trade has aged.

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At the peak of his career with the Red Sox, Chris Sale was one of the best starting pitchers in the American League. While he didn’t win a Cy Young Award, he finished in the top four in voting in his first two seasons with Boston, finishing second in 2017 and winning the World Series the following year.

Sales’ outstanding first two seasons in Beantown, in addition to his success with the Chicago White Sox, are the reason he was able to sign a five-year, $145 million contract extension before the 2019 season. That deal would have kept him with the team through 2024.

Unfortunately, from the moment he signed the contract, everything fell apart. Sale played 25 times for the Red Sox in 2019, posting a very disappointing 4.40 ERA in 147.1 innings. In mid-August of that year, he was placed on the IL with an elbow injury and eventually had to undergo Tommy John surgery before the 2020 season. As a result, Sale missed all of 2020 and most of 2021, making just nine starts this year.

To make matters worse, the left-hander suffered two non-baseball-related injuries in 2022 and was only able to make two starts all season. The icing on the cake was Sale’s 2023 season, where he made 20 starts but had a 4.30 ERA in 102.2 innings. Advanced metrics suggested he was a bit unlucky, but he was nowhere near what he once was.

Ultimately, it all comes down to context. Since signing the contract extension before the 2019 season, Sale has made 56 starts in four seasons, an average of 14 starts per year, and has earned nearly $30 million per year. In those starts, he had a 4.16 ERA. Is that good?

Let’s get all the facts straight. He made a ton of money, was as unreliable as any starting pitcher in the game when it came to staying on the field, would have turned 35 at the start of the 2024 season, and when he was healthy enough to take the ball, he wasn’t nearly as good as he once was. Realistically, what was Sale’s value at the time?

The Red Sox got an interesting infielder in Grissom who never got a fair chance in Atlanta. He had a lot of talent, especially offensively, but because the Braves had such a strong infield, he was never going to get a chance to play. The Red Sox basically got six years of this promising infielder for one year of a pitcher who, based on the four years prior, probably wouldn’t last the entire season, and even if he somehow did, wouldn’t pitch like the star he once was. It didn’t work out, but this is also only Grissom’s first season in Boston.

At the time of the deal, most felt it was a win-win at worst, if not a win for the Red Sox. Sure, Sale always had the potential to rebound, but how realistic was that? The Red Sox could get six years of Grissom for him, that almost seemed like a no-brainer at the time.

In hindsight, the deal looks terrible. Sale was as unbeatable as ever and kept the Braves in the race for the postseason despite all their injuries. The Braves and Sale deserve a lot of credit for that. The Red Sox deserve blame for how this all turned out, but they also deserve some Grace.

No one, not even the most optimistic Braves fan, could have predicted this outcome. The fact that Alex Anthopoulos was smart enough to extend Sale before throwing a pitch for Atlanta makes the victory even bigger for the Braves.

The Braves deserve far more credit than the Red Sox deserve blame.