Unless the Red Sox blew it up, there was very little value on the 26-man roster Bloom inherited besides Bogaerts, Devers, E-Rod, and Benintendi — and those last two had injuries crater their values during the pandemic year. Sale, Eovaldi, and J.D. Martinez had on-field value, but very little trade value at their salaries. Sale was always hurt, and this board IIRC was very, very down on Eovaldi in 2019-20. 2020 was also a totally lost year for JDM, and he had a foot injury the offseason raising questions for him the winter of 2021-22. I definitely wanted them to trade him and re-sign Schwarber, but if someone valued JDM that high, Boras would have known it and he would have opted out.
Landing three games back at both the ‘22 and ‘23 deadlines was the absolute worst spot for Bloom to be in — you can’t really sell there, out of principle, and you can’t buy either. And you have to stay under the CBT for one of them. It didn’t help that obvious sell candidates like Wacha, Kiké, Eovaldi, Arroyo, Hill, and JDM (who was broken) were all hurt at the ‘22 deadline, Hosmer got hurt immediately and killed any chance of getting flipped in the offseason, and last year’s two best deadline trade candidates, Duvall and Paxton, also had their production and trade value marred by injury by August 1st.
Benintendi was hurt in 2020, but had been a total noodle bat the last few months of 2019. Vazquez was trending down for a while, but we had no other catching in the system and the alternatives (Realmuto at 5/$115M, James McCann) were bad ideas. The guy we ideally should have traded, E-Rod, had a scary health issue that arrested his value after 2020, and then pitched very well in a season that ended in a deep postseason run. What can you do about that?
Bloom’s job was to build the roster’s assets while still trying to contend, with the backdrop of a pandemic and a lockout, and a litany of injuries among the roster he inherited. Tough job. In hindsight, I wonder if we should have just sold off Bogaerts after 2021. You can’t do a full rebuild in Boston, they say, but I can’t imagine people would be angrier than they are now.