The heat is all the way up on the hot stove at the 2024 MLB Winter Meetings.
Following Juan Soto’s gargantuan 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets and Max Fried’s eight-year, $218 million contract with the New York Yankees, the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox have struck an agreement to send Garrett Crochet, arguably the most coveted pitcher on the trade market, from the Windy City to Beantown.
If this sounds a bit familiar, you’re not mistaken. On December 6, 2016, the Red Sox acquired Chris Sale from the White Sox for Yoán Moncada, Michael Kopech, Luis Alexander Basabe and Víctor Díaz.
The deal worked out better for Boston than Chicago. The Red Sox won the World Series in 2018 with a rotation led by Sale. The White Sox only saw meaningful contributions from Kopech and Moncada in the bigs. However Moncada’s contract option was declined for 2025 after playing just 12 games last season. Kopech was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers at last summer’s deadline and wound up winning a World Series.
Which means the Red Sox unequivocally won the Sale trade. Who won the Crochet trade? Let’s take a look:
The trade, per reports
Red Sox get: Starting Pitcher Garrett Crochet
White Sox get: Catcher Kyle Teel, Outfielder Braden Montgomery, Infielder Chase Meidroth and RHP Wikelman Gonzalez
The White Sox are receiving four of the Red Sox top 14 prospects based on @MLBPipeline's rankings for Garrett Crochet. pic.twitter.com/pwMttCLu5C
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) December 11, 2024
The Chicago White Sox will be receiving four prospects from the Boston Red Sox, all of whom are highly regarded, sources tell ESPN. It's a big return for Chicago, but for a pitcher like Crochet — an ace-level starter with two years of cheap control — that's the price to pay.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 11, 2024
Red Sox Grade
Let’s start with the obvious: After missing out on Soto, Fried and Willy Adames, the Red Sox were under immense pressure to make a big splash this offseason and were running out of opportunities to do so.
That’s motivation enough to go out and overspend on Crochet, who in his age 25 season — and his first as a starter — was a revelation for Chicago. The lefty twirled 146 innings with an ERA of 3.58 and a WHIP of 1.068 to pair with 209 strikeouts, 33 walks and a 2.69 FIP.
But perhaps the most enticing part of Crochet is the fact he is still arbitration eligible for two more seasons before he can become an unrestricted free agent in 2027. That not only gives Boston a frontline starter for two seasons, but allows it to negotiate an extension. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a new deal for Crochet sooner than later, and a White Sox team coming off an all-time MLB-worst 121 losses certainly had no use for that type of financial flexibility beyond Crochet’s trade value.
This will all boil down to whether or not the Red Sox are capable of finishing off their rebuild in the next few years. Boston hasn’t made the postseason since 2021. It finished third in the American League East in 2024 after consecutive fifth-place finishes. The Yankees and Baltimore Orioles’ rosters remain years ahead of Boston’s. The Red Sox, however, did have a stockpile of elite prospects and rather than attempt to finish out a rebuild before spending, the front office decided to speed things up by shipping out some of their best young players for an elite starter.
It’s a risky gamble if Boston is unable to fill out the rest of it’s team with similar talent, but one the Red Sox backed themselves into. Years of middling results have left the team (and fans) restless. This deal has potential to either speed things up or drastically backfire depending on what Boston does next.
GRADE: B-
White Sox Grade
Trading Crochet this offseason was a given. He simply holds too much value on a franchise that has no use for it. After the White Sox held out on trading him at the deadline, the Winter Meetings was the next most-likely timeframe for a deal to get done.
Chicago won’t go from 121 losses to a respectable opponent in one offseason without spending like it never has before. Instead, the White Sox are looking at another years-long rebuild with a finish line too far away to even make out at this point.
After trading Sale to Boston in 2016 — signaling the tear down of that White Sox core — it took another four years before Chicago reached the postseason, and even then it took a third-place AL Central finish after the pandemic-shortened 60-game season to get there.
We can probably ballpark just how long the White Sox believe this rebuild will take given the prospects the Red Sox are sending back for Crochet. Here are the estimated time of arrivals in the Major Leagues for all the players coming back to Chicago, per MLB Pipeline:
- No. 4 Prospect: Kyle Teel (ETA 2025)
- No. 5 Prospect: Braden Montgomery (ETA 2027)
- No. 11 Prospect: Chase Meidroth (ETA 2025)
- No. 14 Prospect: Wikelman Gonzalez (ETA 2025)
Keep in mind, the youngest of these prospects are 22 years old. They will still need time to develop in the big leagues, which is something Chicago hasn’t done all too well recently. The team also has no incentive to rush any of these prospects through the farm system given how bad the major league team is. There is no incentive to start the clock on their MLB service time yet.
Which means we’re in for another round of the White Sox selling its fans on a future that may never materialize, but that’s also nothing new for this organization (or Sox fans).
Without knowing what else the Sox were offered from other teams, it’s hard to fully judge the return. What we do know is that the White Sox got a ton of high-end talent.
Much like with the Sale trade, getting a big return was never going to be a problem. Now the hard part begins.
GRADE: B+
