Red Sox acquire ace pitcher Chris Sale in blockbuster trade

President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has not been shy about making deals to improve the team since taking over late in the 2015 season, acquiring Craig Kimbrel in a trade with the San Diego Padres and signing David Price last offseason. But if I was the White Sox, I’d be very happy with the return I got.

On Tuesday, the Red Sox became the baseball version of the Warriors, Yankees general manage Brian Cashman said, when they added left-handed ace Chris Sale in exchange for a package of prospects headlined by infielder Yoan Moncada, widely considered the game’s best. Led by Rick Porcello, the reigning AL Cy Young award victor, Boston was tied for third in the AL with the Mariners with a 4.00 ERA. I think where Boston certainly is sitting now and where we’re now sitting, we’re on different time frames.

“We talked a little bit”, Dombrowski said. “He said, ‘Well we’re looking to get away from some of the things we’ve asked for in the past”. Comment and let us know! “We are going in the right direction and building toward something”. Mookie Betts, who had been called up to the majors just over a week earlier, hit two doubles off of Sale.

“We started before the meetings here, we’ve been engaged with them for a couple weeks informally and then it ratcheted up right before the meetings and obviously continued through it”, he explained.

When the deal is judged years from now, the White Sox probably will have made out well, but perhaps not as well as they could have considering Sale’s talent, age and team-friendly contract.

The White Sox were ready for rebuild mode, and Boston clearly had the pieces to rebuild.

Sale was 17-10 with a 3.34 ERA and 233 strikeouts this year, a season after he led the majors by fanning 274.

Meanwhile, Kopech opened the eyes of prospect-watchers by hitting a reported 105 miles per hour on the radar gun this year. He joined the Boston farm system after that and has had four stops in the system, mostly in Class A ball.

“There was a great level of excitement since we got here about the caliber of players that we were likely to receive back”, Hahn said. “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”. The Red Sox committed $63 million in February 2015 to sign Moncada – a $31.5 million signing bonus and an overage tax for the portion of their bonus that exceeded their $1.8 million global bonus pool at the time.

“Moncada was the centerpiece of the trade”, Hahn said.

“We feel like 23 players or more got us to (the playoffs), not two and three and four guys”, Atkins said.