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<\/p>\nRed Sox get: RHP Sonny Gray
Cardinals get: LHP Brandon Clarke and RHP Richard Fitts<\/p>\n
To complete his first big move since taking over as St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations, Chaim Bloom found a trade partner in his former organization.<\/p>\n
Bloom on Tuesday traded starting pitcher Gray to the Boston Red Sox for a pair of hard-throwing young pitchers, Fitts and Clarke. Gray\u2019s contract was reworked so that he\u2019ll make essentially $41 million in 2026, with the Cardinals covering roughly half of that salary. Gray, 36 and coming off a 4.28 ERA, will be a free agent at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
For Bloom, the trade is the first significant step of a rebuild in St. Louis, a process he previously underwent in Boston, where the Red Sox are now ready to contend and had publicly acknowledged a desire to add a high-end starter to their rotation.<\/p>\n
Chad Jennings<\/p>\n
Red Sox: A-
Cardinals: A<\/p>\n
These two teams are in remarkably different places, trying to do remarkably different things. That\u2019s why the deal works so well for each side.
The Red Sox are ready to win, and among their most glaring short-term needs \u2014 a problem that already hurt them in the playoffs this season \u2014 was a No. 2 starter behind Garrett Crochet. Gray fills that void, offering experience and strikeouts without issuing a ton of walks. He\u2019s a rental, and not especially cheap even with the Cardinals covering roughly half of his salary, but he fits the moment, and positions the Red Sox as a team committed to winning. Unlike in the previous season, they had some young pitching depth that they could afford to trade.<\/p>\n
The Cardinals, on the other hand, are where the Red Sox were five years ago. They\u2019re resetting, and another year of Gray would have been a waste. They\u2019re paying down his enormous salary but are getting two big arms in return, one of whom (Fitts) can immediately move into Gray\u2019s rotation spot. Fitts isn\u2019t an ace, but he\u2019s a solid option with the raw stuff to potentially fall back into a multi-inning relief role. Clarke is farther away but offers greater upside, and again, has a solid floor as a hard-throwing reliever. Two big arms are a quality return for an overpaid rental.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Fitts could be an immediate addition to the Cardinals\u2019 rotation. (Matt Dirksen \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Zack Meisel<\/p>\n
Red Sox: B+
Cardinals: B+<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a solid top tier of free-agent starting pitchers in Dylan Cease, Framber Valdez, Ranger Su\u00e1rez, Tatsuya Imai and Michael King, but if you\u2019re itching to address your rotation before diving into the painstaking process of pursuing one of those highly coveted arms, it\u2019s not a bad idea to trade for a guy who\u2019s been a solid \u2014 underrated? \u2014 starter for a long time. And since the Cardinals are chipping in $20 million to cover Gray\u2019s deal, it shouldn\u2019t prevent the Red Sox from dabbling in the free-agent waters in some capacity.<\/p>\n
Ah, but is Gray still good? That might be an important question to answer. He just turned 36 and posted his highest ERA since 2018. A peek under the hood, though, suggests there\u2019s nothing too\u00a0alarming. Yeah, his hit rate increased to about one per inning, again his highest mark in seven years. But he still doesn\u2019t walk anyone. He was one of 12 pitchers with 200 strikeouts. His FIP (3.39) alleviates some of the concern with his 4.28 ERA. You just need him to keep the ball in Fenway Park. His 25 home runs allowed were a career high.<\/p>\n
His hard stuff gets whacked. Hitters logged a .585 slugging percentage against his fastball. And that\u2019s why he only throws it about 22 percent of the time. His sweeper is awesome. Hitters had a .239 slugging percentage and a 42.3 percent whiff rate against it. Just throw that, man. His curveball\u2019s still pretty good, too.<\/p>\n
The Red Sox didn\u2019t cough up anyone they can\u2019t live without \u2014 at least, not yet. They have the back-end depth to withstand Fitts\u2019 departure. And Clarke, an intriguing project with a great arm, has 38 innings in A-ball on his resume.<\/p>\n
As for the Cardinals, what were they going to do with a 36-year-old starter anyway? They\u2019ve been bracing everyone for a rebuild, and they just forked over $20 million to jump-start it. Fitts can slide right into their rotation and Bloom can start daydreaming about making his old organization regret bailing on Clarke. These teams were a great match, and it\u2019s entirely possible both sides wind up pleased, just at drastically different times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Sox get: RHP Sonny GrayCardinals get: LHP Brandon Clarke and RHP Richard Fitts To complete his first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[374,363,99,1231],"class_list":["post-313255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}