The Chief Baseball Officer plainly does not call the shots.
Well, it’s been five years, and here we are. The Red Sox, watching October baseball once again, are finally ready to compete again, right? The good news is that yes, that’s what Craig Breslow, the Chief Baseball Officer of the Boston Red Sox, is hearing.
The bad news is exactly the same.
In a recent interview with Rob Bradford, Breslow mapped out a generic plan for the offseason that sounded troublingly similar to the sustained marching orders from 2019 until now — try, but not too hard. I’m going to transcribe his answer in full, though, because unlike the buttoned-up Chaim Bloom, Breslow can’t help but give us a peek behind the curtain and letting us know, sidelong, who really calls the shots in the organization (emphasis mine):
Bradford: Do you just feel in your bones that this is going to be like a more aggressive offseason?
Breslow: You know, I think we are preparing for that to be the case. It’s obviously difficult to say, you know, this will be more aggressive in terms of what actually comes to fruition, because we can’t always decide those things, but we are preparing to be more decisive, more aggressive, you know, to field a team that is capable of winning the division, of making a deep playoff run, you know, I think we did several years, obviously predating me, building a really strong foundation, and the reason you do that is so you can deliver on the field. And I do think we are arriving at that point. That was the tone that Sam struck, that is, you know, the messaging I’m getting throughout the organization, is that, you know, it’s time to deliver to our fans the teams that they have come to expect, the competitive level they’ve come to expect of the Boston Red Sox.
Obviously, seeing this, there’s an “Oh my God, he admit it!” factor, but I’m glad the cat is, you know, finally, fully out of the bag on this one. In the same ways Bloom wasn’t fully in charge, Breslow is not fully in charge — only the latter has no problem saying so, and for that I’m thankful. Even if he’s wrong on one crucial point.
We don’t expect the Red Sox to be competitive anymore, and why would we? There has not been a good-faith effort to put a division winning team on the field, and that should be the goal. Any team can win the World Series in the current October free-for-all format, as we’re now seeing, but creating a truly winning baseball team takes nothing more than willpower that the Red Sox don’t have.
That’s not fair, actually. The Red Sox organization isn’t made up of just players and coaches and executives but hundreds of people who want to see the team thrive. It’s John Henry who lacks the willpower to make bold moves, and it’s Sam Kennedy who spins Henry’s disinterest toward something palatable. It’s cynical and bad, and it kneecapped their chosen steward, Bloom, who, if anything, stayed far too close to the party line. (They’ll love him in St. Louis.)
Breslow is a different animal. Breslow knows his limitations and broadcasts them. He needs us to know, as if we didn’t already, that he’s not ultimately calling the shots, because when the Red Sox underwhelm this offseason — and they will underwhelm this offseason — he needs us to know it’s not his fault, because it largely won’t be, just as it largely wasn’t Bloom’s.
They can only do what they can do. I think Breslow does it all better than Bloom, including tell the truth, and it could be enough, with a few bounces of the ball, to propel the Sox on an October run over the next fear years. I’m sure, if Breslow had his druthers, it would be in 2025. But he doesn’t. That much is clear.