Red Sox get ace Chris Sale from White Sox for hefty package

But after the two trades Tuesday, the Red Sox then signed free agent first-baseman Mitch Moreland (.233/.720, 22 home runs).

Catch your breath. We’ll wait.

“There will come a day when Moncada is putting in his 15-year career that we will be saying, ‘The Red Sox, geez, I can’t believe we traded that guy.’ So yes, it does complicate it”. Travis missed almost all of a year ago with a knee injury and could use more development time at first base. He sent future All-Star closer Andrew Miller to the Florida Marlins in an eight-player deal for Miguel Cabrera while with the Detroit Tigers. Kopech, a native of Longview, Texas, has gone 8-7 with a 2.61 ERA (39 ER/134.2 IP) and 172 strikeouts in 36 appearances (35 starts) over three minor league seasons in the Red Sox minor league system after being selected in the first round (33rd overall) of the 2014 draft out of Mount Pleasant (Texas) High School.??

Boston endured two losing seasons after their last World Series triumph but remade their roster in the process.

A few hours earlier, Boston got prime setup man Tyler Thornburg from Milwaukee in a package that included infielder Travis Shaw.

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon answers a question from the media during Major League Baseball’s winter meetings, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016 in Oxon Hill, Md. Should Ortiz make a comeback?

“This path doesn’t fit with how we have acted over the last several years”, Hahn said.

“(Moncada is) a great player and if he’s not a tremendous player I will be very surprised”, Dombrowski said.

A lot of baseball people were saying that a lot of the reason why the Nationals ended up failing in getting Chris Sale was that they didn’t want to part ways with Treat Turner. The White Sox do have veterans Brett Lawrie at second base and Todd Frazier at third so there’s no immediate opening in Chicago anyway. “You had a lot of advanced talks coming into the [winter] meetings, and I think one of the benefits of all the teams being in one spot is that you get a better sense of what is real and what’s not. I really thought for sure he was going to end up in Washington, I really did”. But Dombrowski has never shied away from bold, aggressive trades, and this was as bold as it gets.

As the Providence Journal’s Bryan MacPherson pointed out on Twitter, reigning AL Cy Young victor Rick Porcello is now the third best pitcher in Boston (behind Sale and David Price). The 31-year-old, who will make $12 million in 2017 and $13 million in 2018 before becoming a free agent, saved 37 games last season with a 3.47 ERA. But the Red Sox will take their chances with this threesome, especially with the bitterness of being swept out of the division series still lingering. And if you get there, do you progress from there? “We couldn’t be trying any more to win”. “It’s more about the collective, about building the best possible team year in and year out and what gives us the best chance to sustain that”.

Hyperbole aside – the Red Sox did lose retiring Silver Slugger David Ortiz, after all – Cashman seemed to enjoy casting the Red Sox as overwhelming favorites, a position the Yankees routinely found themselves in when ex-Red Sox CEO Larry Lucchino reveled in labeling them the Evil Empire.

This year, the relationship between Sale and the White Sox became extremely strained. NY doesn’t have Boston’s prospect depth. “Boston’s like the Golden State Warriors now of baseball”.