The Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals swung another trade Sunday. Willson Contreras will go to Boston to join up with former Cardinal Sonny Gray, multiple league sources told The Athletic, with three right-handed pitchers going back to the Cardinals, highlighted by an 18-year-old with a very promising arm.

The Red Sox already seemed to have soured at least a little on first baseman Triston Casas, and this trade would appear to confirm that unless they have some secret plan to put Contreras back behind the plate. (He didn’t catch a single inning last year, but I wouldn’t hate seeing him get some reps back there.)

Contreras moved to first base last year and responded with a career high in plate appearances and a 2.8 fWAR/2.5 bWAR season that saw his offense slip a little bit but remain comfortably above average. He still hits the ball hard quite often, but his exit velocities are creeping down, with his average and max dropping over the last two years, which he’s made up for by squaring up the ball a little more often.

The result last year was a 124 wRC+ that ranked sixth among 15 qualifying first basemen. The Red Sox got an 86 wRC+ from first base last year, ahead of only four teams that missed the playoffs. Having Contreras over that group would have been worth almost three full wins. He’s under contract for two more years, plus a club option for 2028, and the Red Sox are on the hook for $34.5 million over that span — a bargain if he holds most of that production through 2027. As for Casas, quite a few teams would be interested in trading for him as a cheap, young first baseman who hasn’t performed up to expectations yet, including the Rockies and Marlins.

The Cardinals’ return

Right-hander Yhoiker Fajardo is a strike-thrower who saw his velocity start to tick up last year, his one year in Boston’s system after the Red Sox acquired him from the White Sox via trade, with plenty of projection left on his 6-foot-3 frame. He was mostly 93-94 with a slider, curveball, and changeup last year, showing good feel to spin both breaking balls, while the fastball was on the flatter side. He pitched all year at 18, starting in the complex and finishing 13 starts in Low A, where he struck out 27.8 percent of hitters and didn’t allow a homer. His delivery is pretty good for a teenager, very online to the plate, coming out right around a 3/4 slot, maybe a tick long in the back, but hardly enough to matter right now. He’s a big upside play, a guy who’d probably have been a first-rounder (or paid like one) had he been in the draft this year.

Hunter Dobbins is probably a swingman or a reliever in the long term, but there’s no physical reason he can’t start. (Winslow Townson / Getty Images)

Right-hander Hunter Dobbins threw 61 innings last year as a rookie, sitting 94-96 with a 55 slider and a 45 splitter among his offerings. The fastball is really straight, and the splitter doesn’t have a lot of tumble to it. He posted the best walk rate of his career in his big-league time — just 6.25 percent — and repeats the delivery pretty well, although there’s not much deception to it. As is, he’s probably a swingman or a reliever who might be throwing more like 97-98 in that role, but there’s no physical reason he can’t start; the issue is the lack of anything to miss more bats. His season ended in July when he tore the ACL in his right knee, undergoing surgery in August; the typical recovery from that surgery is nine to 12 months, but we’ve reported he’s expected to be ready for spring training, so maybe he got the express service.

Right-hander Blake Aita was Boston’s sixth-round pick in 2024 after a solid career at Kennesaw State, where he showed above-average control of a basket of four fringy-to-average pitches. The Red Sox have given him a changeup and a splitter since he entered their system, which helped him to have zero platoon split this year in Low A and High A, although he still doesn’t have an above-average pitch. His slider had the best whiff rate of all his pitches this year, but the pitch doesn’t have very sharp break despite a high spin rate, and he gave up more homers on the slider than on any other pitch. His delivery works pretty well, and he at least gets in the strike zone often enough to be effective, although he doesn’t have real command that would allow him to pitch to specific spots or the edges of the zone. He’s an interesting project for the Cardinals’ revamped pitching development program, which will probably try to find a new or altered pitch to give him the swing-and-miss offering he needs to be a starter. (As an aside, I wish Radhames Liz was still pitching so we could get Radhames and Aita on the same roster.)

The Cardinals now can put Alec Burleson at first base full-time, although he could stand to sit against most lefties, and if they wish to give Jordan Walker his 81st chance, there’s a spot open for him in the outfield alongside Victor Scott II and Lars Nootbaar. They need to trade one more infielder to make room for prospect J.J. Wetherholt, who will be ready for the majors very early in the season, and at this point could probably stand to sign a bat to a one-year deal for at least some sort of depth at DH or on the outfield corners. Their prospect depth is in the lower levels, so other than Wetherholt, they don’t have anyone likely to need playing time in the short term, and can afford to sign a few veterans to short-term deals and hope to create some trade value.