Craig Breslow: Introduced

The Red Sox officially made it official: Craig Breslow had a press conference so he's now the new head dude in charge. What'd he say? Well, read on!

The Red Sox introduced Craig Breslow as their new President of Baseball Operations on Thursday afternoon with a press conference and a number of interviews. It went fine. Not unlike four years ago when the same people introduced Chaim Bloom, or four years before that when the same people (more or less) introduced Dave Dombrowski. Or four years before that when… well, you get the point. Those all went fine. This went fine too.

This isn’t to take anything away from Breslow, who comes off as smart and decisive and very aware of what he knows and what he doesn’t know. Those are very good qualities in a leader, by the way. It’s not hard to see how he could be a very good person to have in charge of the Red Sox, and it’s not hard to see how the Red Sox could’ve been seduced (for lack of a better word) by those qualities evident in Breslow.

But Breslow has been in charge of the Red Sox for a week? A few days? I can’t remember. It’s not long though, and as I wrote before, there really isn’t much to go on when it comes to the track record. For anyone hoping to lift that fog a bit, the press conference didn’t do a whole lot of fog lifting. Mostly it was boilerplate stuff about getting better, being committed to winning, being on the same page, etc. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but it wasn’t much different than Bloom’s introductory presser four years prior. In fact, you could probably cut and paste some of the answers from one to the other without changing anything contextually and it would fit just fine.

However, having watched the presser and listened to a number of Breslow’s interviews, I can say that there was some things that stood out to me. So let’s go through those.

A lot of people need a few moments to formulate their thoughts in situations like this. Sam Kennedy, as I tweeted, takes forever to finish a sentence. That’s not uncommon in these instances. There’s a droning effect that takes place where the person speaking drops cliche after cliche amid long mid-sentence pauses. And, to be clear, it has nothing to do with the future effectiveness of their front office. But Breslow wasn’t like that. Not really. He spoke in those same front office cliches from time to time, but he came off differently, more decisively.

There were other moments when, while answering questions, he sounded like someone who is going to make hard decisions. On a number of occasions rather than giving a cliched answer, he said, in effect, there are going to be some changes and some uncomfortable conversations will be had surrounding those changes.

Music to my ears.

We’ll see whether he backs that up, but it would be pretty silly to say that at an opening presser and then, you know, not back that up. So I’m guessing there are some people in upper management with the Red Sox who might be looking for new work soon enough.

I’m not looking for people to lose their jobs, but I do think one of the failures of the Bloom administration, and not really one that’s on Bloom specifically, is that there was no turnover in the front office during his tenure. There were promotions and he brought a few people in from other organizations, but mostly the people in the front office when Bloom arrived where there when he left. Just as they were under Dombrowski, just as they were under Ben Cherington, and even under Theo Epstein. I don’t get the sense that Breslow is going to tolerate that. He’s going to ruffle some feathers soon enough.

I also don’t get the sense that he’s going to keep chugging along as Bloom would’ve likely done in terms of roster construction. I think there are going to be some big changes. That could be good, it could be bad, but I do think it’s gonna happen. Specifically he mentioned moving minor leaguers for pitching, which would be quite a thing to do, and very much against the Bloom mold.

The Red Sox have clearly focused on building a foundation of position players through their organization. That’s clear through their drafts and their international spending and it shows up clearly on the team’s Top 10 list, where you have to get to number seven before you find a pitcher. That is probably a safer strategy and a higher percentage strategy, but it leaves you in a spot with little pitching. From an asset standpoint, that’s probably good strategy. From a baseball standpoint, well, you need pitching to win. That strategy, it sounds like, will be changing shortly, if not yesterday.

Of course, as with all these things, Breslow will be judged on what he does, not on what he says, or what he projects. That said, after hearing him talk, I’m gearing up for an exciting off-season. If I had to guess, at least right now, I’d say Breslow is going to be analytical in his search for answers, but he’s not going to let analytics stop him from being decisive and bold.

It’s all a good start, as these things go. Bloom had a good start too, though. I suppose that’s the purpose of days like this: to generate optimism. After watching Breslow, the day did its job. I’m more optimistic now than I was two days ago. But as always, the man will be judged on what he does, not on what he says. So let’s see. Because while what he said was pretty good, it doesn’t hold a candle to what comes next. And, with the World Series now in the rear view mirror and the GM meetings beginning next Tuesday, November 7th, what comes next starts right now.

Thanks for reading.