About two years ago to the day, the Boston Red Sox traded former ace Chris Sale, who at the time was unpredictable and oft-injured, to the Atlanta Braves in return for promising young infielder Vaughn Grissom. Sale has since won an NL Cy Young award and is one of the best pitchers in the league when healthy.
Grissom's career has taken a turn for the worse. He, also, cannot stay healthy, and even when Grissom plays, he's failed to make much of an impact in Boston. Now, he's an Angel, where he'll get a fresh start on a team that could finally provide him with consistent playing time.
MLB trade grades: Red Sox deal Vaughn Grissom to the Angels
Grissom is a former top-100 prospect who never quite panned out. If anything, he is a reminder to front office executives everywhere not to hoard young players. Potential is just that until it is realized, and Grissom has a career .255 batting average and -0.1 bWAR in 95 games. The Braves, the team he first came up with, tried to play Grissom all over the infield, and even flirted with moving him to the outfield. None of it worked.
In Boston, Grissom was quickly overshadowed by the Red Sox more polished infield prospects like Marcelo Mayer, who leaped him on the organizational depth chart. Stuck in Worcester without much of a chance to make the big-league roster, Grissom needed another fresh start.
Isaiah Jackson, 21, is the Angels 25th-ranked prospect. He hit just .219 in A-ball last season, with a .668 OPS. He is a former eighth-round pick of the Angels, and the younger brother of pitcher Andre Jackson, who pitched in the big leagues under 2023 before taking his talents to Japan. Jackson is said to have tremendous raw power, but hasn't yet tapped into that in pro ball. His strikeout rate was a concern coming out of school, as he struck out nearly 26 percent of his at-bats in his freshman and sophomore seasons at Arizona State.
Red Sox trade grade: B-
Angels trade grade: C
What Vaughn Grissom deal says about the Chris Sale trade for Braves, Red Sox
Since joining the Braves in 2023, Sale has had back-to-back elite seasons, with an ERA of 2.38 in his NL Cy Young-winning 2024 season, and a 2.58 ERA in an injury-shortened 2025 campaign. When he's healthy, Sale sits near the top of the Braves rotation, which can be one of the best in the majors. Sale, Spencer Strider and Reynaldo Lopez all have elite stuff, and it's why the 2025 season was such a disappointing in Atlanta.
The Braves felt comfortable letting Max Fried walk last winter in part thanks to Sale's emergence. As FanSided's Eric Cole wrote in his coverage of this trade, there's little doubt at this point that the Braves won the deal.
"There is a chance that Grissom finds stability and success with the Angels, but the list of reasons why the Braves struck gold with the Sale trade just keeps getting longer. Even if Grissom does end up being good, Sale has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since joining the Braves. Atlanta would take losing Grissom's talent (and baggage) and giving Boston some salary relief to land Sale again 100 times out of 100," Cole wrote.
Again, Grissom's success in Anaheim is relatively meaningless at this juncture. Hopefully, he can find some stability in a new home. The Braves will still take the Sale trade any day of the week.