Full trade, per ESPN sources:

Boston Red Sox receive: Sonny Gray and cash

St. Louis Cardinals receive: LHP Brandon Clarke and RHP Richard Fitts

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 25, 2025

Red Sox receive:

• • RHP Sonny Gray

Cardinals receive

• LHP Brandon Clarke and RHP Richard Fitts

 

 

Boston Red Sox Grade: A+

Boston needs a no. 2 guy, man.

We can and should celebrate the Ace of the staff. Garrett Grochet shut the Yankees down in his one playoff start. 7.2 innings, 1 run, 11 strikeouts.

Boston wins Game 1.

And then Boston was just, out of pitchers…

Sonny Gray eliminates that problem.

5 pitchers have recorded 200+ strikeouts the last two seasons. Garrett Crochet and Sonny Gray are two of those pitchers.

Sonny Gray is expensive, even with the Cardinals helping with the bill but he’s on a short-term deal that puts Boston in a win-now mode.

Fans complained about Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers getting locked out of the building but the Red Sox front office turned things around quick. (Sort of)

They got a taste of the Wild Card round and they’re shooting for the World Series.

Like I said in my ceiling/floor blog about the Mets Marcus Semien trade, we should be so thankful when a baseball organization actually wants to win baseball games.

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St. Louis Cardinals Grade: B

Last season, Sonny Gray won 14 games, with 201 strikeouts, a 94 ERA+ and 10 Ks/9.

The Cardinals finished 78-84, middling, irrelevant, time-wasting. St. Louis was less interesting than the Savanah Bananas.

Keeping Sonny Gray does nothing for the Cardinals. An expensive motorcycle with no license.

25-year-old Richard Fitts fits right into Sonny’s spot in the rotation.

In 15 Major League appearances, Fitts has recorded a 105 ERA+ and a 2.13 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

His 2025 was interrupted with a pectoral strain and neuritis in his throwing arm.

Neuritis is the inflammation of nerves.

I don’t love acquiring players with nerve pain in the body parts they need for their jobs but the Cardinals are starting from scratch.

They can afford to take risks on pitchers with Fitts’s ceiling (even if they might not have feeling in their arm right now).

Richard Fitts could be a name stitched into the core of the next great Cardinals contender.

This day could be historic for St. Louis.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think of Sonny Gray. Or even better, reach out and send some of those shades of Gray and I’ll tap in and write about it. Hit up ya boy on social media: Facebook. Twitter. Bluesky. Instagram.

Or shoot me an email (I refresh that thing no less than a million times a day) Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com.

 

 

Next up to read: Riley Gaines, Foreign Twitter Bots and The MLM Loser Economy

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