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Cardinals trade RHSP Sonny Gray and a reported $20 million to Red Sox for RHSP Richard Fitts and LHSP Brandon Clarke
The catch here is that there’s a 25% chance the Cardinals aren’t any worse off today than they were Sunday. Gray, 36 with a cooling heater, comes with considerable decline risk. Richard Fitts is a 26-year-old right-hander with a 3.97 ERA in 65 2/3 career innings the last two years. Fitts, like Gray, uses five pitches, but at the center is a 96-mph fastball, albeit a hittable one (.241 xBA, .473 xSLG in 2025). A sweeper he throws exclusively to righties has been his most effective weapon, and he’s still working on how to get lefties out, allowing a 21/16 K/BB to them so far.
The takeaway isn’t “Fitts will be better than Gray in 2026” so much as it’s “their range of outcomes overlaps a bit, enough that Fitts could be better than Gray in 2026.” The Red Sox are buying the greater certainty of good performance because they need that, the Cardinals want the possibility of years of a #4 starter in Fitts, and the financial savings. The chance that they’ll even be better off in ’26 is gravy.
