Craig Breslow has accepted the Red Sox’s offer to take over as head of baseball operations, report Alex Speier and Michael Silverman of the Boston Globe (X link). He is expected to be named chief baseball officer, reports Chris Cotillo of MassLive (on X). The team will presumably wait until Wednesday before announcing the hire.
Breslow, 43, is a Yale graduate who spent 12 seasons in the majors as a reliever. While he spread that across seven organizations, he’s best known for his time with the Sox. The New Haven native pitched 211 innings across five campaigns with Boston, turning in a 1.81 ERA for the 2013 World Series club.
After concluding his playing career in 2018, Breslow signed on with the Cubs as their director of strategic initiatives for baseball operations. He shed that wordy title when he was named director of pitching one season later. The following year, the Cubs bumped him to AGM in Jed Hoyer’s front office, a title he has held for the last three years.
Just a half-decade after first joining a front office, he’ll get his crack at running the show. Breslow replaces Chaim Bloom, who was fired midway through September with the team en route to a second straight last place finish. Boston finished the season at 78-84, an identical record as they had in 2022.
Breslow will be tasked with pushing the club back into contention in one of the game’s toughest divisions. He steps into a situation that’s certainly not devoid of talent but comes with an uncertain direction. The Red Sox ranked 11th in run scoring behind a lineup anchored by Rafael Devers and Triston Casas this past season. Former top prospect Jarren Duran took a step forward to secure an outfield spot.
Boston will have some decisions to make as they build around that group. Justin Turner is likely to decline a player option, subtracting one of their top hitters from this year. Alex Verdugo is entering his final season of arbitration eligibility and could be a trade candidate. The Sox will need better from Trevor Story at shortstop but could upgrade at second base, which was a revolving door during Bloom’s tenure. Masataka Yoshida is on hand in left field and at designated hitter, while they could explore ways to upgrade on the catching tandem of Connor Wong and Reese McGuire.
The pitching side has its share of uncertainty as well. Tanner Houck, Nick Pivetta and Garrett Whitlock are all effective multi-inning arms who haven’t cemented themselves as starters. Brayan Bello tailed off following a promising first half. Chris Sale has battled myriad injuries in recent years. Boston’s rotation finished 22nd in ERA.
While a mediocre defense hasn’t done the pitching many favors, sorting out the rotation might be the top priority for Breslow and his front office staff. The longtime hurler unsurprisingly took on a heavy workload in building the pitching infrastructure in Chicago, as The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma, Patrick Mooney, Jen McCaffrey and Chad Jennings chronicle.
The Red Sox have a solid minor league pipeline and an organizational track record of running higher-end payrolls. They’ve cut back on player spending of late, opening this season outside the top 10 for the first time this century (as covered by Cot’s Baseball Contracts). It’s unclear precisely how much ownership will make available this offseason, although it’s apparent the Sox are going to make some kind of effort to compete in 2024.
Breslow joins Texas GM Chris Young, White Sox GM Chris Getz and Seattle president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto as former MLB players who are now in charge of a front office. He landed the job over the likes of Minnesota GM Thad Levine, former Pirates GM Neal Huntington, former Giants manager Gabe Kapler and internal candidates like Eddie Romero, Michael Groopman and Paul Toboni — all of whom met with Boston brass. Various high-profile executives (e.g. James Click, Kim Ng, Derek Falvey and Mike Hazen) either declined interviews or pulled themselves out of the mix at one point or another.
It’s possible Breslow’s hiring is just the first, if most important, in constructing the new look front office. There have been reports that Boston could also hire a new #2 executive in the kind of arrangement that has become commonplace around the game.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
