Earlier, the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals completed a trade with the following details:
Red Sox receive
→ RHP Sonny Gray
→ 20 million USD
Cardinals receive
→ RHP Richard Fitts
→ LHP Brandon Clarke
If we don’t look at the detailed stats first, we can roughly summarize the deal like this:
- The Red Sox acquired a very experienced and steady starting pitcher who can even be a top-of-the-rotation arm, plus 20 million dollars in cash.
- The Cardinals received two young pitchers. Among them, Richard Fitts is already a young starter who can handle MLB-level competition, and Brandon Clarke was one of the most promising pitching prospects in the Red Sox farm system.
Below, we’ll briefly break down what this trade does for both teams, what kind of players these three pitchers are, and why the Red Sox receive 20 million dollars in the deal.
🌟 What kind of pitcher has Sonny Gray been in recent years?
Sonny Gray began his MLB career in 2013 with the Oakland Athletics (who have since moved out of Oakland). With the end of the 2025 season, he has now accumulated 13 MLB seasons.
He’s currently 36 years old. While that’s certainly on the older side, his overall health over the past three years (2023–2025) has actually been quite good. In each of those seasons he made at least 25 starts and pitched 160+ innings, making him a true innings-eating starter (and he’s posted 3.5+ fWAR each year).
In addition, over the last two seasons (2024–2025), his strikeout rate (K%) has been above 26.0%, while his walk rate (BB%) has stayed below 6.0%, which is the profile of a pitcher with very solid command.
Although his ERA in 2025 (4.28) was a bit worse than the league average of 4.16 (his ERA+ was 97.2), his advanced metrics tell a different story. Looking at Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), which isolates the elements more under the pitcher’s control, his 2025 FIP was 3.39, clearly better than the league average 4.16.
Gray has also been a very stable presence. In his 32 starts this season, he pitched at least 3 full innings in every outing, and in only one-quarter of his starts did he allow more than 4 runs. That means in about 75% of his games, he kept the runs allowed to 4 or fewer. He almost never has those “completely blown up in the first inning” type of outings where he can’t retire anyone.
On top of that, in all 32 starts this year, there wasn’t a single game where he recorded fewer than 4 strikeouts. Overall, his game-to-game performance has been extremely stable.
One more important note: although his average fastball velocity this season was only 91.7 mph, Gray throws six different pitches (four-seam fastball, slider, curveball, sinker, cutter, changeup), and each of those pitches had a usage rate of at least 8% in 2025. That level of pitch-mix diversity makes his sequencing and game plans very versatile.
🌟 Why do the Red Sox want Sonny Gray?
1. The Red Sox didn’t have many true “innings-eater” starters in 2025
In 2025, the Red Sox had only four starting pitchers reach the “qualified innings” threshold of 162 innings (the requirement to compete for the ERA title; one of them being Garrett Crochet with 205 1/3 IP). In other words, they didn’t have that many starters who could consistently shoulder a full season’s workload.
By adding Sonny Gray, the Red Sox can further stabilize their rotation and get more reliable length out of their starters, which is extremely valuable.
2. There weren’t many true strikeout-type starters in the current Red Sox rotation
Before Gray joined, here were the recent K% marks for several key Red Sox starters (using 2025 numbers where possible; some didn’t pitch in MLB in 2025):
- Garrett Crochet (2025: K% 31.3%)
- Brayan Bello (2025: K% 17.7%)
- Patrick Sandoval (2024: K% 22.9%)
- Kutter Crawford (2024: K% 23.1%)
Even for guys like Patrick Sandoval and Kutter Crawford, whose strikeout rates are decent, there’s still some uncertainty about how their stuff will look after missing a full MLB season; their “strikeout power” might not fully bounce back.
With Sonny Gray—a pitcher who still misses plenty of bats—coming in, the Red Sox add another starter with strong strikeout ability, which is a big plus for the rotation.
3. The current Red Sox starters have somewhat similar pitching profiles (fastball-heavy, less pitch-mix diversity)
In 2025, the main Red Sox starters were generally the type who leaned heavily on the fastball and then mixed in a couple of breaking or off-speed pitches. Even if many of them throw fastballs averaging 93+ mph with usage rates above 40%, having too many starters with similar profiles can be an issue over a multi-game series.
If all the opposing hitters see the same style of pitcher game after game, it becomes easier for them to adjust and figure out the staff as a whole.
In contrast, Gray doesn’t rely on velocity; instead, he uses a wide array of pitches. His arrival adds a very different pitching style to the rotation, boosting the diversity of looks the Red Sox can throw at opposing lineups. That mix-and-match element makes it easier to disrupt hitters’ timing and rhythm across a series.
4. The Red Sox are now legitimately in a “win-now, postseason-contending” window
Even though the Red Sox were in more of a retool/rebuild phase in the previous few years—and after Rafael Devers’ departure, none of the 2018 championship core remains—the team still made the postseason this year. They lost the Wild Card series to the Yankees 1–2, but if you look at the overall trajectory, the Red Sox clearly have the ability to reach the playoffs and reassert themselves as a contender.
And whenever a team is ready to take that next step, the quality of the starting rotation becomes a crucial factor. Compared with other top contenders, Boston’s rotation was still somewhat incomplete. Filling that gap with a reliable top-of-the-rotation arm like Gray directly addresses a key weakness and is a major boost to their postseason aspirations.
🌟 So where does the 20 million dollars going to the Red Sox come from?
At the end of the 2023 season, Sonny Gray signed a 3-year, 75-million-dollar contract (average annual value 25 million) with the Cardinals. His 2024 and 2025 salaries were:
- 2024: 10 million USD
- 2025: 25 million USD
Because he was traded in the middle of this contract, the financial structure had to be adjusted, including parts of the future salary and options.
The Red Sox’s adjusted terms look like this:
- Gray’s 2026 salary is reduced from 35 million to 31 million
- The 2027 mutual option (team/player mutual option) buyout increases from 5 million to 10 million
As for the 20 million dollars sent by the Cardinals to the Red Sox, it comes from breaking down Gray’s 2026 financial obligations:
Gray’s 2026 salary is 31 million dollars. Within that:
- 10 million dollars correspond to the 2027 mutual option (buyout)
- 1 million dollars are tied to him waiving his no-trade clause
So the calculation is:(2026 salary 31M−10M mutual option−1M no-trade waiver)×104=2000×10,000=20,000,000 USD
That’s how we get the 20 million dollars.
🌟 What do the Cardinals get in return?
The Cardinals receive two pitchers:
- RHP Richard Fitts
- LHP Brandon Clarke
Richard Fitts is a young pitcher whom the Red Sox promoted to MLB in 2025. This season, he appeared in 11 games (10 starts), throwing 45 innings with a 5.00 ERA.
He’s shown solid run prevention skills, with a LOB% (left-on-base percentage) of 75.1%, and for a rookie, his control has been quite respectable as well (K/BB of 2.5). On the downside, he’s allowing 2.2 home runs per nine innings, which is clearly on the high side. But considering he’s just getting his first taste of the big leagues, these weaker areas are exactly the type of things that can be improved with experience and adjustments.
From the Cardinals’ perspective, they’re heading into a rebuild. Several of their 2025 starters are older—Sonny Gray (35), Miles Mikolas (36), Erick Fedde (32). With the club committing to a younger, retooling direction, it makes sense to trade away veteran pieces in exchange for players with more upside and future control. This trade fits that blueprint perfectly.
The other player, Brandon Clarke (who shares a name with the Memphis Grizzlies power forward), was drafted by the Red Sox in 2024 with the 148th overall pick. He’s currently a 22-year-old left-handed pitcher whose highest level so far is High-A (A+).
This season at High-A, across 38 innings, he’s posted a K% of 34.5%. His walk rate is indeed high (BB% 15.5%), but at the same time his opponents’ batting average against is just .126, which is an outstanding figure.
The reason the Red Sox are willing to part with Clarke is that their rebuild is almost complete; they’d rather convert some of that future value into immediate MLB help to strengthen the big-league roster. On the Cardinals’ side, while their current MLB-level pitching is relatively weak, their farm system boasts a number of intriguing young arms.
Given that many of those prospects may soon move up to contribute in MLB, adding another high-upside arm like Clarke further deepens their pitching prospect pool, which is exactly what a rebuilding team wants.
That’s it for this round of analysis. If any of you have thoughts on this trade or different angles you’d like to add, feel free to share!
Sources:
- CBS Sports
- FanGraphs
- Taiwan Baseball Wiki
- Sports Vision (運動視界)
- MLB.com
- FanGraphs (again, for detailed metrics)
- TalkSox (forum)
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