One of the lasting memories of the 2024 Boston Red Sox season will always be the trade that came before it.
At the turn of the calendar year, the Red Sox shipped longtime ace Chris Sale, who hadn't pitched a full, healthy season in half a decade, to the Atlanta Braves for middle infield prospect Vaughn Grissom. To say the initial returns on the trade look bad would be a colossal understatement.
Sale is almost definitely going to win his first career Cy Young Award, while Grissom bounced between Major League Baseball and the minors all season long. Though Sale's Red Sox contract was set to expire at the end of the 2024 season, a pitcher of his exact caliber would have been the difference between making the playoffs and missing out.
Grissom not only lost the inside track to become the long-term starter at second base, but he now faces a stiff test from top prospect Kristian Campbell, who soared to Triple-A in 2024. However, Dan Secatore of SBNation predicted that Grissom would get at least one more shot as the 2025 Opening Day second baseman for the Red Sox.
"Thanks to the phosphorescent play of Campbell, the emergence of David Hamilton, the continued development of Marcelo Mayer, and the three remaining years on Trevor Story’s contract, both the near and long-term status of the Red Sox middle infield is completely up in the air," Secatore said.
"If I have to guess as of today, I’ll say that he starts the year as the Opening Day second baseman with Campbell in AAA. If he doesn’t establish his big league value within a month or two and Campbell keeps hitting, he’s in trouble."
Grissom's 2024 campaign was essentially a lost season, which is never a welcome development for any player, but especially not for a 23-year-old trying to establish himself as a big-leaguer. He hit .190 with a brutal .219 slugging percentage in his 114 MLB plate appearances, and even struggled in Triple-A at times too.
As Secatore references, seniority likely gives Grissom the first crack at the Opening Day second base job, but many things could still change that. Grissom found that out firsthand last season when his Spring Training injury cost him the first month of the season and threw his entire campaign out of whack.
At this point, it's fair to say more Red Sox fans are excited about Campbell than Grissom. The former Braves top prospect has the opportunity to prove a lot of people wrong, but it's hard to say how long the opportunity will last.
