Red Sox Round Table: One moment in team history that you would change

Red Sox extend Chris Sale too soon

I’ll go with a more recent one: Extending Chris Sale after the 2018 season was a huge mistake that can be argued as a large part of the reason why Mookie Betts was traded. The team wanted to cut payroll and that’s fair, but they likely wouldn’t have needed to trade Betts if they just waited until after 2019 to decide what to do with Sale.

The fact that they went with the injury-prone pitcher over a five-tool superstar is mind-blowing. I understand wanting Sale around for the long haul after ’17/’18 but there were red flags during those seasons as well and it was irresponsible to extend him early.

I also get that Betts was always going to hit the FA market, but the team would have been put in a better position to lock him up long term if they hadn’t already paid Sale.

Not only is Sale taking up a large portion of the Sox payroll for the foreseeable future, but we don’t actually know if he’ll ever be the ace he once was upon returning from TJ. You can argue that he wasn’t as good last year because of nagging injuries but it seems like every year there is something wrong with him physically anyways.

-BSI Contributor, Max Bozicas