Sustainability Inability
Since the news broke, I’ve got a bunch of messages asking when I was going to drop a substack article. Presumably expecting some scorched Earth roasting of Red Sox ownership for the firing of Chaim Bloom. A decision I clearly think is ridiculous and slimy.
A couple of months ago, I gave my opinion here on some pros and cons from the Bloom Era, and why I thought firing him would be mostly ridiculous. I think that covers enough of how I view things that a total rehashing and timeline isn’t necessary.
I never really thought about which way the media would break if Bloom was let go, but I think it’s been mostly fair and has leaned very favorable toward him.
Jeff Passan said what Bloom was tasked with was, “damn near impossible.”
Kiley McDaniel wrote, “Red Sox ownership asked Bloom to come in and do the nearly impossible – and he merely did solidly instead of delivering a miracle.”
Sean McAdam wrote, “Bloom is gone, too, for the sin of having done exactly what the Red Sox asked him to do: cut payroll, improve the farm system and keep things respectable at the major league level.”
The question now is who is going to have control over the roster going forward. Everyone is posting their speculative lists, each made up of a couple of retreads, the pie-in-the-sky names entrenched in cushy positions across baseball, all the up-and-comers, old friends, and the in-house candidates.
Give them whatever title needed to get them here, but one thing I know, I don’t need the next person in charge of the roster to be the same person coordinating and micromanaging hundreds of people across all departments.
For me, it’s simple. If Alex Cora is interested in moving from managing to general managing, he is who I believe the Red Sox should hire. No offense to people like Jon Daniels, Sig Mejdal, Brandon Gomes, Eve Rosenbaum, etc…. but if I’m the Red Sox, handing a young core and good farm system over to someone in the next month, I would trust Cora over any of them to know where the Red Sox stand, where they need to be, and have a plan to get there.
As for everyone else, there are many long-tenured folks working for the Red Sox with impressive resumes that could easily be listed as worthy of a shot. Eddie Romero obvious stands out with his exceptional track record in international scouting and player development work.
As for outside candidates, who the hell knows? Everyone has an impressive resume, they are all extremely bright, and it's almost certain that each one would come with organizational objectives that are precisely what Bloom was implementing.
Coming soon will be an end of the year roster roundup, my prospect rankings, and an offseason planning survey.