I think he will likely go.
So instead, they got nothing for Paxton. Who was out of contract at the end of the year. Smart.
Injuries don't have to prevent you from competing. Those are excuses. Didn't the Rangers win their division the year Darvish was out with Tommy John?
One issue is that even among the "Friedman school" of baseball execs, there will be those that fare better than others. And those that have strengths and weaknesses in different areas. So we really don't know what the next VP-BOPS will be good at. I think it was noted that there was a period when the analytics group at the Red Sox was one of MLB's smallest at one point in the mid-2010's. Which is shocking given that they were at the forefront of adopting analytics early in 21st century.
No details needed but can you say if this is on-field related or off-field/economics related?
One that ends in a championship or several, or at least a meaningful chance at the title for multiple years. We can probably agree that, in general, teams with money can leverage it to speed up a rebuild, but beyond that, prospects are people and they are ready when they are ready. My personal belief is that having some really elite athletes can play a huge role, and those guys tend to be drafted as teenagers. Quick rebuilds are likely to be a lot more tenuous and prone to failure. But hey, if the people can't stand waiting, then I guess they'll get what they asked for.
Forgive the speculation here, but any sort of academy in an untapped area is intriguing.
So a botched deadline and the collapse of the pitching staff are the likely culprits.
I believe there was also a conversation at the deadline with Miami and Turner for young pitching.
I have the same preamble but the opposite view. This is a realization that Bloom sucks at developing the ML team, that fans pay for ML, and it’s a time to cut bait/losses once this season is no longer tenable.
Injuries almost always do prevent you from competing, occasional exceptions aside. Wasn't it Schilling who, ages ago, pointed out that teams whose intended starting rotation makes the most starts usually end up winning?
Holding the Eflin deal up against Carrabis's statement that Bloom has a poor reputation amongst GMs and agents though, I can see how it might might hold outsize weight for Henry & Co. Maybe nobody could have gotten Eflin to come to Boston, but does ownership really want to have doubts about their GM's ability to get his guy going into this offseason, where we so desperately need starting pitchers in a huge FA market?
Eflin has outright said he was very close and Bloom offered a deal Tampa matched. Barring him going drastically over market or moving the team to Orlando what would another GM do?
JD Martinez was junk? Come on now. Bloom took on like $20M to land Jackie Bradley and $7M for Adam Ottavino.
Just as likely as "rudderless ownership" is Bloom telling ownership, "here is what I intend to do & here are the things I want to accomplish," and simply being unsuccessful at too much of it. We all want there to be some overriding story, but whether or not Bloom "is any good at this" in some abstract sense is immaterial. He (probably) promised certain results (or progress, or benchmarks, etc) and hasn't met them. To me *that's* how a nerd like JWH would analyze it.
He was one of the few to correctly identify Bloom's days as numbered, so I think he has more credibility than the usual smear campaign upon firing. YMMV
Who knows, but maybe that's a place where having good relationship with an agent might have made a difference in negotiations.
Winning, sure. Competing because you lost two players to injury?
Waiting for what? Bloom hasn't shown any discernible ability to be a plus evaluator of major lesgue talent. I'm sure this is one of the primary reasons, if not the primary reason, why we are moving on.
Related to this - I feel like the prevailing collective wisdom on SoSH is (or was, until today) that Bloom was basically brought in to rebuild the farm and/or slash payroll with a several-year grace period on the MLB club. And I'm a bit skeptical of the whole premise.
Efflin sign for 40 over 4. Offer him 55 over 4? You can't outbid Tampa?
JD Martinez in 2022, which is what HRB was talking about, yes. For the salary he commanded he was an albatross.
This gets at something I've been thinking about for the last day or so, prompted by the "what happens to Cora and Chaim this offseason" thread.
Eflin signed for 40/3 and that's what Boston offered. If you think 55/4 would've done it you know as much as I do (which is nothing), maybe Bloom should've done that - would Henry have signed off on it? Did the Sox know or did Eflin take that deal back to Tampa to match because he wanted to pitch for his hometown team. We don't know.
I don’t think it will and I don’t think it was Chaims idea anyway. It was one of the things Henry mentioned explicitly when he did his last interviews (investing aside from pure player payroll). Henry was then mocked for this and went back to the yacht.
A pure DH with a bum ankle producing 1.1 bWAR/1 fWAR for 20 million dollars is an active hindrance. Not nearly as much as Sale but 20 million dollars could've absolutely been spent in a better way and the Sox, well, did at least in my view (I just don't buy Fangraphs defensive metrics for Yoshida, he's bad but they're giving him Manny in the early 2000s defensive values out there)
What sourcing do you think he had to identify Bloom's days as numbered and what angle do you think those folks would want to put out in the aftermath of a firing?
Last two years the Sox have lost nearly their entire rotation, all at once. It's sucked.
It was on-field related, which was what was so interesting to me about the opportunity
I'm pretty sure that building the farm during Theo's time was a lot easier if you were a big market club. There was no bonus pool. Really, the way to build farm nowadays, besides totally tanking for a number of years, is to make shrewd trades where you're selling MLB players. That being said, IMO, Boston is a franchise that should have the resources to both (a) sign good players for today while also (b) drafting/trading for/signing future good players. As been said multiple times in this thread, Bloom has not been very good at (a).
Just because there's no lie does not mean he was performing to what was expected.
The article quoted outright credited Bloom for most of this. If Henry continues hiring people who focused on this, I'd love it, and all of this really does hinge on who that person ultimately is, but to dismiss Bloom's role given he is credited repeatedly in these articles as the driving force feels wrong.
After the failed translation of the Tampa model, I really want someone that knows how to spend, and win, in a big market, and has shown consistent success doing so. I've heard Mike Fast's name come up a few times in the past around GM openings. That's someone more in line with what I am interested in.
I tend to agree. Bloom was... OK.
