Sure, agree with all that, but I just don't know what a disaster looks like in terms of the outcome. You have pointed to the causes but what are the effects? I ask because it would help to think about those when assessing whether we really should worry about the causes.
Well said! We forget the connections in the relatively tiny business environment that is Major League Baseball. I'm intrigued that Breslow and Bailey are evidently very good friends. Might be a 2fer, CoBO and Pitching coach. Of course, if the pitching got worse, he'd have to fire his good friend, so maybe Enterprise Pitching VP.
Sorry I kept changing this, Speier messed me up lol. Press conference is in 8 days.
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/red-sox-announce-hiring-of-craig-breslow-as-new-chief-baseball-officer/
Per WARP, which does a much better job with pitchers than bWAR (which is too results oriented) or fWAR (which is too focused on what it thinks should have happened rather than what did), Bello is already the 26th best pitcher in MLB. He is not a #3 starter in any universe remotely resembling reality. Give him something better than the worst defense in NCAA Division VII ball and he’s going to be better still. By virtue of having Story/Urias in the MI and Little Raffi in CF Boston’s D will be actual MLB quality. Especially if, in the short term, Duran is moving to LF and Yoshi to DH/4th OF. Abreu in RF might be a downgrade from Dugie, but not enough to offset the improvements elsewhere.
Perales was signed in 2019 at age 16, Monegro in 2020 at age 18, Paez in 2021 at 16. So two out of three are Bloom signees, the other Dombrowski. All young enough that if they develop into anything, it's as much a credit to the new administration as the old.
Uhh, the disaster outcome would be that he's bad at identifying and acquiring talent and managing a roster?
Totally fair. I was just simply allowing that if someone liked Bello less than I did, I didn't want to get bogged down in discussing on where Bello is within the top half of the rotation, just that I think we can all agree he IS a top half of the rotation starter.
Though I wonder if identifying talent is a skill that requires years of experience in leadership. Wouldn't that be more a matter of talent and insight? Now - I CAN see how negotiating is an acquired skill; negotiating trades and contracts. Though Breslow's experience, intelligence, and track record with the Cubs make me optimistic about his ability to identify and develop talent.
It's meaningless PR. As meaningless as all the praise and character articles will be in two months. The public perception of Breslow will be driven by how much he sprinkles scoopy tidbits to the media influencers, or kills the org discipline on leaks. (And secondarily, how much the frustrated(?) lifers in the org like him.)
Right, and he's done the talent evaluation stuff for a while now. This is my point. He may literally be "inexperienced" at being GM but for the important components of his job, as far as we know, he actually has solid experience and performed extremely well.
Some of it's scope, some of it's situational, but I think it points a couple outcomes of concern.
Do we know that he he has "solid experience and performed extremely well" when it comes to talent evaluation? In order to determine that we would have to 1st determine how the Cubs have done at talent evaluation the past few years, & then be able to parse how much of that is related to Breslow's expertise, & how much is related to that of the multiple people ahead of him on the organizational hierarchy (or the people lower on the hierarchy doing the actual scouting, statistical analysis, whatever).
It would be really hard for Breslow to fully trust the in-house grades he inherits on minor league players without having time to form his own conclusions. Generally, I think that it is easier to assess free agents than it is to decide which prospects to trade, so I anticipate more of the former in order to avoid being responsible for sending off the next Bagwell.
I'm probably higher on Winkelman than Monegro or Paez (just too young still). Winkelman significantly cut down on his BB% over the course of the full season last year. He was looking seriously problematic at best and likely a Plus bullpen arm... but around mid May he cut his walk-rate down to an acceptable margin, and I suspect he'll continue that trend. It reminds me of Lester where there was a lot of questions regarding his ability to stick as a starter due to his BB%. Both have high K rates and a good feel for 4 pitches and both are on the same trajectory.
But the fact that the Cubs did not make this adjustment, especially if Breslow is supposed to be this pitching savant, is pretty concerning. Rather than making a good adjustment, they traded him for a mediocre infielder, who they then traded to the Tigers for a bad relief pitcher (Carlos Guzman who is 25 & had a 4.86 ERA/5.01 xFIP in 76.1 IP in AA this season). Remember how much vitriol the Red Sox got for not fixing Brasier & leaving the Dodgers to do it?
OK, good stuff there. I guess my typically optimistic take would be that the situation he's coming into is favorable for a few reasons. First, on the position player side, the development of several close-to-Boston prospects is baked in and just needs to continue. In fact, their top prospects are so heavily tilted to hitters that I'm not sure they need to add any for a long time. They do need to assess their individual value as trade chips. Hoping Romero stays around to provide continuity there.
Yeah, I could see him succeeding also. A lot of it we just don't have any strong information on, one way or the other. But I think you're right in that he should have some significant money for signings.
I would like the organizational philosophy to be to draft hitters (and later, lottery ticket pitching) and then trade the surplus for pitching..
Well, I think the problem was that he was allowing home runs with those tertiary pitches that he should have been throwing less of. It's true that 20.8% of FB's being homers in Chicago compared to 4.5% in LA & 6.8% in Boston is definitely a large departure. Part of that may have to do with the pitch mix as well in terms of the occasional hanger. But it definitely wasn't just home runs. Opponents had a .295 BA (.393 BABIP) against him with the Cubs, .133 (.200 BABIP) with the Dodgers, & .236 (.301 BABIP) this year with Boston.
I have no idea what to expect out of Breslow, but it's pretty hard for me to imagine a realistic scenario where he wouldn't want the job, given:
Even without Romero, they have lots of guys familiar with the farm system including Paul Toboni (33) who was hired in '15, promoted to director of amateur scouting in '19, & oversaw the '20, '21 & '22 drafts before being promoted to VP of Amateur Scouting & Player Development. He was replaced as director of amateur scouting by Devin Pearson (29) who ran the '23 draft & has been with the org since '17. Both are former college baseball players (Pearson was good enough to be drafted in the 30th round in '12) & both are Cal grads.
This is constantly changing of course, I think there is some truth here, but I'd maybe put the dividing line between the first round and the rest of the draft.
It's not like teams haven't had success with first round pitchers. George Kirby, Alek Manoah, Grayson Rodriguez are all recent examples. But I'm not sure how you see past the risk, since a lot of it is injury stuff that happens post draft. I'd take Kirby over lots and lots of position players, though. I guess my point is, the standard approach would be what you identify, but at some point you should also be prepared to take on the risk. Right now the Sox' system is so tilted toward position players that they might want to take the risk.
I believe Eddie Romero is the correct answer. I have no qualms with the Breslow hire, but most of the exciting young players in the system have come on Romero’s International Scouting watch: Devers, the aforementioned Perales, Monegro, and Paez, and also Bello, Rafaela, Bleis, Wikelman, and even Yoshida.
From what I've heard this is correct. The Sox did approach Theo about the job, he turned them down which is why SK was able to rule Theo returning out immediately. Theo kept in contact with SK due to their friendship, and Theo voiced significant support for Breslow. Theo is on very good terms with the Red Sox, but does not want the job ever again.
If y'all want many a word on the state of our DSL pitching prospects, the Minor League Forum is your oyster lol
After writing way too many words & thoughts, these were my projections about which DSL pitchers would be promoted/stay/get released:
& these are my Top 258 prospect rankings which include every prospect or quasi-prospect in the org (I think), including all the DSL guys. Will spoiler cuz long.
Or, he treats it like the best (non-playing) job he's ever had and attacks the first 30/60/90 days as any top executive would at a new company, and he's bold and decisive because he wants his bosses to believe they made the right choice.
https://www.audacy.com/weei/sports/red-sox/jon-daniels-reveals-why-he-declined-boston-red-sox-interview?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
A playoff team?! Just flipping 11 games? You realize Eovaldi was hurt from mid July to early September — same as Sale, Whitlock and Houck?
