And if you're a GM and you look at how Bloom and Dombrowski got rung out the door with the budget of the Sox no longer being a Top 5 one...the choices might be more appealing elsewhere. I'd be surprised if candidates feel nearly as good about helming Boston after what the last two guys went through.
If you sign Wacha (2.0 bWAR), you don't get Kutter Crawford (1.9 bWAR) in the rotation. Kluber, sure, that's a miss, but it's a 1/$10M mistake. The Dodgers gave $13 to Noah Syndergaard. The Astros gave $60 million to Jose Abreu, and he's worth negative 1 win this year.
Eh, it's Rosh Hashanah, not Yom Kippur. He can go out and drink his face off after services.
You really don’t think head of baseball operations for the Boston Red Sox isn’t one of the most coveted jobs in baseball? When the Red Sox call, you pick up the phone.
Fair point. Obviously depends on the number of openings. Some guys can afford (professionally) to wait.
I wouldnt be bummed. But at same time I'd prefer a situation that is more sustainable that is typical of a Dombrowski team. That said, I do understand your larger point.
You can accuse Bloom of many things but he had absolutely no hands in the Josh Reddick deal.
This is where I land. You can say no way he would have known this would happen again but it’s two years in a row with similar approaches and the same results.
Yeah, the cupboard is super stocked. This should easily be the #1 opening.
Like you, I've been a vocal defender of what Bloom was doing. It's impossible to believe he was doing it without the express support of ownership. I agree with your statement here.
You wouldn't know the Sox have been one of the most successful teams in baseball the past two decades based on how some of the higher volume posters talk about the team here.
Right? You can't expect to get a good round challah if you're working 12 hour days
It’s a weird thing when people seem to be more proud of Bloom getting his team to within two games of the WS than with the guy whose team won it all.
If a really high profile company in your industry offered you a high-paying, hard to get role with a lot of opportunity for success (the Sox have won four WS in the past 20 years so even if you hate JWH & co and surprisingly there a lot of you, they do have a track record of going all in when necessary) but also a high risk that you will be judged harshly/quickly and wind up unemployed but with all your money you would absolutely turn that down?
If I were a GM who was actually in demand, and the last two guys
No thought needed on my part...
If you're going to move on from your GM, when is the best time to do it?
Which results? The performances of the guys he brought in like Turner, Paxton, both catchers, Duvall, Whitlock... or the injuries? GMs don't control injuries and they don't have much say in the box scores. At the major league level they get guys and manage budgets. If he was fired over box scores then Sox braintrust is even stupider than I would have guessed.
I'm not going to be that proud of the next guy either if he manages to not completely fumble the bag.
That 2018 title led to the last five years that people here seem to hate directly. IMO it was entirely worth it and I am fond of Dombrowski for that alone, but a lot of people want this to be the Brady Patriots when we build like the Stafford Rams.
I think it is because this team now has everything it needs to be elite. Good MLB talent, tons of young guns, and plenty of money to spend, and now, it seems, ownership that is willing to go for it. All that plus an elite fan base and baseball market? Oh, and if you do win a WS with this team, you will have had to make enough changes that YOU will get credit for building the team, not the previous guy. What more would you want?
Who is this? I'd say as a Bloom defender that Dombro did great but the job changed and they brought in another guy to do a completely different job. And it seemed like a good idea because unless you win a WS with a bunch of kids under 27, or you can handle a $400m payroll, the job of staying on top with the same team is extremely difficult.
The standard is to make these sorts of moves in the offseason. I don't know what the "best" time is but people thinking this is a headline move may be right but if they are I am more concerned about the top of the house. Media cycles are in nanoseconds unless its a really big ongoing story. The vast majority of the people on the planet could not possibly care less about who is GM for the Boston Red Sox.
But that's exactly why they brought him in in the first place. Sure there were a couple contracts that weren't very helpful, but they brought him from the Rays to be able to deal with that specifically. One could argue that sending away Mookie freed up a ton of payroll for him to work with.
Yes, this specific opportunity is the proverbial being born on third base. Ownership is going to spend.
At the end of the day the rotation was a disaster. The decisions don't look good. How did we miss on Efflin? Why let Eovaldi walk? There isn't much help coming in the minors either. He also let Erod walk - again defensible. But at the end of the day someone has to start. The state of the Dodgers is very different from Boston's - they could afford to take a gamble. Boston's rotation at the start of the year was nothing but a gamble.
Yeah, this. I get the point about ownership being untrustworthy but give me a list of trustworthy billionaire owners. GMs all know that they can't expect to last, they take their contract and hope for the best. So instead the attraction will be the factors Baseball Jones just listed.
The big stuff like trading Mookie, letting X walk, rebuilding the farm, and staying under the luxury tax threshold are 100% ownership demands. Chaim isn’t intentionally building a roster with one hand tied behind his back because he likes a challenge.
What's the difference between doing this today or in two and a half weeks? The season is effectively over and this is a critical offseason. If they know that Bloom isn't the guy, shouldn't they rip the bandaid and start looking for the next one?
You could argue that, but it would be silly. He was traded so they didn't end up in luxury tax hell by paying him as a FA. They were never going to spend that "savings."
The good MLB talent acquired Bloom that's not good enough for these amazing fans who are mad at a couple .500 years. A ton of young guys acquired by the guy you just first and the guy before him you fired. A mid tier payroll that there has been no public indication Henry is willing to spend to go with the SD, NYM, LAs of the world. And a WS that even if you win, you might be fired the next year with a ton of crappy media stories and fan disdain that you didn't do it all while maintaining a Top 5 farm.
The rotation was a gamble for 2023, sure, but a strategy to a long term rotation. Also the Eovaldi decision has been explained ad nauseum. He was holding out for a longer deal.
I think by doing it now they shift the fanbase speculation into "who will be in charge" and "what will they do" rather than looking like they failed at the end of the season and enduring a bunch of will/won't clean house as they're gearing up to sign FAs and sell tickets.
I was just curious. Nothing to go by, but I think that they look outside the organization to fill Bloom's role. I just find it strange that they might hire someone under Bloom if they are looking to do things differently. That doesn't suggest that BOH or the 3 Asst. GMs may not be capable, but if ownership wasn't willing to go one more year with Bloom I'm wondering if they turn the reigns over to someone that was reporting to him.
I don't see any strategy heading into '24. Bello and who? There isn't help coming in the minors.
I should probably reframe that. I don’t think ownership said “let Xander leave in free agency.” I think negotiations got to a point where they said, “we aren’t doing that,” and then Xander went to SD.
The other advantage is that if the Pats lose to the Fins this weekend, the torches and pitchforks will do a 180 and head over to Gillette to rage over BB losing his fastball.
