The Red Sox have hired former Cubs assistant general manager Craig Breslow as the team's new chief baseball officer*. Breslow replaces Chaim Bloom, who was fired after four seasons, three of which ended with Boston all snuggly, but far from content, in the AL East basement.
*: Is it necessary to mention "baseball" in his job title? Isn't that more or less implied?
Breslow pitched for the Red Sox (and six other teams) during his 12-year career (2005-06, 2008-17). He was a member of the 2013 World Series champions.
I couldn't be more excited to return to the Boston Red Sox, an organization that means so much to my family and to me. I am humbled by the opportunity to lead baseball operations and to work alongside so many talented people. I'd like to thank John Henry, Tom Werner, Mike Gordon, and Sam Kennedy for entrusting me with executing the vision we share for this organization. I know firsthand how special winning in Boston is, and I look forward to once again experiencing that passion and success with our fans.
Great. Enjoy the rest of the day, because tomorrow morning, it's right into the fuckin hot seat, pal.
Chad Jennings, The Athletic:
According to multiple people with knowledge of the process, Breslow was the only candidate to receive a second interview. He's been described as a favorite of Red Sox ownership from the very beginning, and — perhaps not coincidentally — also a favorite of former Red Sox GM Theo Epstein, whose opinion still carries weight in the organization and who has long touted Breslow's potential as an executive.
"We don't have a predetermined set of qualifications necessarily that we're looking for," [Red Sox president Sam] Kennedy said at the end of the season. "But we do have a targeted list of individuals that we think will be able to help get us back where we belong in the American League East."
Many of those individuals declined to interview for the position, which is not unusual for this sort of hiring process, but the extent of it did catch the attention of many in the industry who felt the Red Sox were having a hard time rounding up qualified candidates. In retrospect, some now see Breslow, 43, as a favorite for the job all along. He checks a lot of boxes the Red Sox seem to value.
For one, Breslow is familiar with the Boston market. . . . [H]e's continued to live in nearby Newton, Mass., and worked remotely from home through much of his Cubs tenure. He's also a Yale graduate, often noted for his intelligence and for his familiarity with analytics and technology, two essentials of the modern game. . . .
Breslow is also a former player, specifically a pitcher, and pitching development has been a Red Sox organizational weakness for several seasons under multiple heads of baseball operations. . . .
Some in the organization have expressed concern about Breslow's relative lack of experience and the potential that he could keep pushing the team further to the analytic side of player evaluation and roster construction.* . . .
Jon Lester debuted in 2006 and Clay Buchholz in 2007, but after that the Red Sox went more than a decade without drafting and developing another consistent, long-term big-league starter. . . .
The organization in recent years shifted its player development philosophy to be more proactive and aggressive with its pitching prospects, and the team might have graduated its latest rotation fixture in 24-year-old Brayan Bello . . . The rise of Kutter Crawford and the second-half performance of prospect Wikelman Gonzalez are also signs of progress on the mound. . . .
[E]arlier this offseason . . . the Red Sox let go of longtime pitching coach Dave Bush, who'd been a key voice in the organization's pitching program for eight years . . . [and they] decided not to bring back Triple-A pitching coach Paul Abbott, who'd been working in the organization for 13 years.
Clearly, the organization was working toward a pitching overhaul regardless of the person in charge.
Now the person in charge is a former big-league pitcher who worked extensively to overhaul the pitching program of his previous franchise. It's not hard to compare Breslow to first-year [Texas] general manager Chris Young, another former pitcher with an Ivy League education who had little front-office experience before replacing Jon Daniels as the head of baseball operations late last season. Young already has [Texas] in the [2023] World Series.
*: Oh, the fuckin horror of it all! The very thought that Breslow might consider facts and weigh probabilities is a cause for "concern"!! Who the hell is clutching pearls because of that? Jesus, it amazes me still (after many decades of observing the world) the way intelligence and an open mind is consistently portrayed like drowning puppies and kittens or being possessed by the goddamn devil.
Matthew Kory ponders this Breslow news at Sox Outsider:
There are a lot of Assistant GMs in baseball and it's not like the Cubs, while a good team in 2023, have had a run of excellence where teams are lining up to hire their front office people. . . . [I]t seems Breslow's big selling point was his role in revamping the Cubs pitching program. . . .
Using fWAR as a quick 'n dirty metric, the Cubs went from 29th in team pitching in 2021 to 26th in 2022 to ninth this past season. That's ahead of the Dodgers, Brewers, [Atlanta], Astros, and Guardians, as well as a certain team you might be aware of that resides in Eastern Massachusetts. . . .
Even so, these things are always kind of nebulous. In baseball, you can do the right thing and get wrong results. You can do the wrong thing and get right results. That's just how the sport works. And that applies on the field, in the draft room, and in the front office. . . .
Alex Speier of the Boston Globe, who broke this story and who you should absolutely be reading if you care at all about the Red Sox, points out that the Cubs pitching staff wasn't the only thing Breslow had going on. He was also involved in other aspects of the major league roster in Chicago.
That is good . . . because Breslow is going to have to hit the ground running in Boston. . . .
I don't think anyone thinks he can't do the job, and there were some reported candidates who I would've asked that question about. Still, being a smart and capable person isn't anything close to a guarantee of success in Boston. . . . Before Theo's two World Series, there was the belief that winning one championship would mean a job for life. We now know that's not true . . .
[I]t seems pretty clear this wasn't the [hiring] process the Red Sox thought they were going to conduct. . . . The Red Sox, I think, had eyes on a few different people to start with, including GM of the Dodgers Brandon Gomes, POBO of the Diamondbacks Mike Hazen, Phillies GM Sam Fuld, and Head of the Twins Derek Falvey, among others. All refused interviews for the job. Oops. . . .
Previously the Red Sox hadn't really opened things up like this before, so I think they were likely surprised at their inability to attract top names. . . . So this might have been a bit of a wake up call for Red Sox ownership.
You might think all that would give Breslow a bit more slack but I doubt it.
Dan Secatore, Over The Monster:
[Breslow] has held precisely one front office job in his life: he ran the Chicago Cubs pitching development program for the past four years. It looks like he did an outstanding job in that role. . . . Cubs minor league pitchers collectively threw harder than the pitchers of any other organization in 2023 and were graded to have the second-best stuff. Meanwhile, homegrown Cubs pitchers tossed 417.1 innings last year, after totaling just 178.1 innings between 2013 and 2019 combined. It seems like he's really, really good at running a pitching development program.
But, notably, Breslow's role appears to have had little to do with roster construction, free agent signings, or trades (though there are reports that he had become part of the Cubs front office "inner circle," beyond his role in pitching development). In light of the fact that many speculate that Bloom was let go because ownership didn't think he had what it takes to aggressively pursue the Major League talent required to take the Red Sox to the next level, hiring someone with an indiscernible track record in that area is certainly an interesting choice.
So is he any good? No one knows yet, but let's hope so.
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