Reports: Red Sox Might Get Chris Sale

by
December 6, 2016

Well, the last 48 hours made it sound like Chris Sale to Washington was the deal we should expect, but today’s winter meetings fun; never count on Dave Dombrowski!

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The Red Sox are apparently making a late charge to land the White Sox ace, which would be a significant upgrade for a team that was a bit weak in rotation depth last year. And certainly, the Red Sox have the kind of talent Chicago would want; this summer, I speculated that perhaps a combination of Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech could entice the White Sox to move their ace. From that piece.

Boston Red Sox
This one’s pretty easy; the team could start the bidding with either Yoan Moncada (#1 BA/#2 MLB) or Andrew Benintendi (#9 BA/#7 MLB) and go from there. Top 10 hitting prospects are highly valuable assets because they usually combine upside and proximity to the big leagues, and thus are worth something like $75 million; Moncada may be worth closer to $100 million, since he’s the guy who might be the top overall prospect in the game right now.

So the White Sox would be right to demand either in a deal, but even Sale isn’t worth both, so the Red Sox would have to pick which of the two they wanted to keep around, and then add some additional value beyond giving up a terrific young hitter. If Benintendi was the main piece, Rafael Devers (#41 BA/#25 MLB) would be a reasonable piece to add, putting the Red Sox package on part with a Urias/Bellinger or Urias/Verdugo offer from Los Angeles.

If Moncada is the guy they’re sending to Chicago, though, Devers’ value probably pushes the deal past what Sale is worth; his value gets you most of the way to Sale, so the second piece could be a higher risk guy like hard-throwing righty Michael Kopech (#93 BA/#83 MLB), since back-end Top 100 pitching prospects are worth about $15 million. Toss in some sweeteners on top of that, and the White Sox would at least have to think about it, as Moncada and Kopech could give them a pretty great return.

As Rosenthal notes, nothing is done, so this could change again, but the Red Sox with Sale, Price, and Eduardo Rodriguez would be a brutal opponent for teams with left-leaning line-ups. Stay tuned!





 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

3 Comments
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ZonkMember since 2016
9 years ago

Rosenthal just reported it’s done; Moncada, Kopech, a bit more for Sale.

Wow, really good prediction Dave! Well done!

15
phoenix2042Member since 2016
9 years ago

Weren’t there a bunch more comments on here a minute ago? Did y’all just give us a clean slate to talk about the done deal?

0
phoenix2042Member since 2016
9 years ago

If White Sox made it Moncada AND Benintendi or no deal, I think the Red Sox would have eventually caved. It would have been too high a price definitely, but with the Nats waiting if it didn’t work out with the Red Sox, White Sox had all the leverage. I think that Dombroski would have eventually caved. He has shown that when he wants something, he gets it, and screw the price!

1