Looks Like It's Craig Breslow Time In Boston

The Red Sox finally found the person to take over for Chaim Bloom: Cubs assistant GM Craig Breslow will be the new President of Baseball Operations in Boston

Breslow should show up for work in full uniform every day.

…and the assistant GMs will be Koji Uehara, Mike Timlin, and Daniel Bard, who will split time both in the Red Sox front office and the Rockies’ bullpen.

With that entirely predictable and mediocre joke out of the way, we can get to the meat of this, which is that the Red Sox have finally found their next President of Baseball Operations (POBO?) in Craig Breslow. Breslow takes over for Chaim Bloom, who the Red Sox fired about a month ago.

Breslow was of course a relief pitcher for the Red Sox twice (2006-07, 2012-15) and for five other teams as well, making him a name worth remembering, if no other reason than when you get stuck on a square in the Immaculate Grid.

What makes Breslow a fit to run the Red Sox’ front office though wasn’t his excellent work during the 2013 playoffs. If that was what it took, we could be looking at The Dark Lord, Alfredo Aceves, as the next man for the gig. No. Fortunately for all involved. No! What set Breslow apart was his work in the Cubs front office. After his playing days, Breslow went to work with Theo Epstein in Chicago. There he rose to be an Assistant GM (Assistant to the GM?).

So that’s good but still, why Breslow? 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. We’ll certainly learn more in the coming days and weeks, but from what is out there right now, it seems Breslow’s big selling point was his role in revamping the Cubs pitching program. In essence, he’s Better Pitching Dude.

How’d that manifest on the field? 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, Braves, Astros, and Guardians, as well as a certain team you might be aware of that resides in Eastern Massachusetts. That definitely qualifies as a success.

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. So just because the Cubs pitching improved doesn’t mean Breslow is a pitching genius. That’s not at all how it works. It might have just improved. It might have improved in spite of him. The Cubs pitching under Breslow’s direction definitely improved, though, and Breslow was definitely in charge of it when that improvement took place.

Even if it was all on Breslow, and stuff like that is never really on just one person, hires for high profile front office jobs aren’t typically made over a team’s pitching staff going from bad to good over a three season stretch. 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 both because otherwise this would be a pretty thin resume for a hire like this, and because Breslow is going to have to hit the ground running in Boston. The World Series starts Friday and ends the following Saturday at the latest. That gives Breslow about two weeks to figure out where the bathrooms are and how the copiers work before he has to start making major non-copier-related decisions.

The truth is, we don’t know much about Breslow the Front Office Executive. He worked in Chicago under Theo Epstein. Peter Gammons put at least part of the argument for Breslow in this tweet, so here:

That’s an endorsement of sorts. Though if I’m honest, I’m not sure what fitting the market really means. I guess knowing Boston and the fans and having worked with ex-Red Sox FO peeps Theo and Jed can’t hurt. It probably even helps! But the truth is, it’s not really about the market or the organization, it’s about ownership, and ownership can be fickle. As we’ve seen. Repeatedly. They’re quite capable of pulling the rug out from under any GM by changing philosophical direction on a dime.* Now they want a guy to methodically build up the roster and farm system and take your time take your time take your time WIN NOW WIN NOW YOU’RE FIRED.

*How’s that for multiple cliches in a sentence?

Breslow is obviously a very smart and capable person, but so was Chaim Bloom, so was Ben Cherington, so was Dave Dombrowski. I guess he fits in that respect. 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. Come to think of it, I’m not sure what a guarantee of success in Boston would even look like. 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 (unless you’re GM of the Yankees). In fact, the two GMs before Bloom were fired within two years of World Series championships. So I guess what I’m saying is good luck, Craig.

It’s worth discussing the hiring process though because, even if Breslow succeeds, it seems pretty clear this wasn’t the process the Red Sox thought they were going to conduct. Things started when everyone including you (and very rude of you, too) immediately took themselves out of the running for the job. 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. Not great when you think you’re going to replace someone with someone better and the better someones answer the phone with ‘yeah no thanks’ before you can even introduce yourself.

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. After Theo Epstein left, they simply elevated Ben Cherington. They targeted and brought in Dave Dombrowski to replace Cherington without any search (and without telling Cherington). Then they only interviewed Bloom after firing Dombrowski. 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. For now though it doesn’t really matter anyway. There’s a lot to do and four years is a long way off. Things can change a lot in that time. Or, you know, not at all.

Thanks for reading.

(Hi Britt!)