Why do we think Dombrowski was fired?
And no “Because he signed Chris Sale without John Henry’s approval” conspiracy theory answers please.
The Red Sox have fired Chaim Bloom
- Thread starter Smiling Joe Hesketh
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And no “Because he signed Chris Sale without John Henry’s approval” conspiracy theory answers please.
While the above is not 100% true he had to beg the FO TO Approve The contract that DD originally offered Sale
View: https://twitter.com/redsoxstats/status/1700636272610406663?s=46
As several have said, I’m ambivalent about the firing of Bloom. If this is a reset of sorts, I’d much rather see the replacement of Cora and the coaching staff. Improvements in fielding, baserunning, pitching, and situational hitting - whether with current players or new recruits - are what I think will make us a contender.
I tend to think DD was fired because he had traded everything of value on the farm and he couldn’t get the Mookie deal done. If they were smart they would have locked up Mookie years before he was traded. 2018 was great. 2019 was awful for a team where are lot of young players were going to be expensive.
I liked Bloom but he failed with the starting pitching in all ways you can this year. He chose the wrong veteran arm to sign. He saddled the staff with god awful defense. He never went out and got a starter or two when Houck, Whitlock, and Sale went down. This bullpen was good but they burned it up with all those bullpen games. I’m not thrilled with Cora either. This team lost a lot of winnable games to shitty teams this year. The performance after the trade deadline is wretched. Perhaps they felt Bloom was loathe to trade prospects.
I like the Henry ownership group, they have been great for the franchise. They have won with multiple managers and GMs. They are a pretty savvy bunch. I am sure they will chose a smart, capable person.
The point it not scapegoating per se.
Perhaps they scapegoated Tito, but only after things went awry in unexpected ways. If the 2011 team wins a few more games, maybe Tito is STILL managing the Sox. They were responding extemporaneously to very disappointing results.
The particular tangent here is that firing Bloom now dispels the idea that what he was doing these past four years - the stealth 5-6 year rebuild, was at the charge of ownership; he was doing exactly as ordered. If Bloom was doing just as they wanted him to do, and the plan was going just as it was intended, why would they feel the need to scapegoat him? Cuz fans got restless? Surely they knew that would happen.
So the contention is even more implausible: they hired him for a slow rebuild - which he'd been doing - knowing fans would get restless and disgruntled, and knowing they would fire him when that happened?
Yep, this is good and succinct. And get some friggin starting pitching. Which Bloom spectacularly failed to do especially at last offseason after declaring that he was targeting 7-9 more players to contend in 2023. This team did not really contend; and Bloom therefore failed to accomplish what he said he was going to do.
This sums it up well too. Thanks Van Everyman.
Like many others, I’m having a hard time being worked up over this decision. I’d be okay if Bloom was retained, too. Seems to me that Bloom was pretty conservative, quick to give up on free agents when it came to new contracts. That mostly soared the Sox from disastrous contracts, but of course he got caught flat footed with one of the few bigger ones he gave out with Story. I think this left the team in mostly good shape but without a clear path beyond mediocrity.
As an anti-Bloom person, this news was still surprising to me. I didn't think he had a plan, but it's pretty clear now ownership doesn't either. I know a large portion of people on this board refuse to question/criticize them (which I really don't understand) but I have no idea why you can Bloom at this point unless you really think the fans are tuning out and it's causing permanent damage. I maintain that ownership is still focused on that nba team and expected the Sox to just print money with minimal effort like they always have. When the latter got threatened (or is at least perceived to be) ownership apparently decided that doing anything was better than doing nothing.
Yeah I think at its simplest ownership fired Dombrowski and Bloom not because of their performance, but because in their view neither was right for the upcoming job.
Dombrowski came in, made the playoffs his first full season (2016) and fielded the best Sox team of all time in 2018. I don’t think he was canned because 2019 was disappointing…FO knew the org needed a rebuild and DD wasn’t the guy to do it. I think this time around the FO had a good feeling that bloom would do a good job with the org rebuild, but they’ve seen enough at the big league level to make them think he is not the guy to capitalize in Boston what he’s built in the system. So they’ll look elsewhere. I just hope the next person is a continuation of this type of sustainable approach rather than someone who will force us to repeat this cycle.
I like this theory. I just don’t get why they do this during the season instead of waiting three weeks
Might be as simple as they have their eyes on a few people and they’d rather not wait and risk losing out?
I think DD was fired because he convinced Henry to spend a ton of money on pitchers who all got hurt or were ineffective at once, which caused the Sox to an underwhelming 84 win season. Henry looked at TB having a much better season while spending little on pitching, and wanted a guy who could do that. When that guy couldn’t, he fired him. And off we go.
To be honest, I kinda knew this was coming. I think we'd also be better off letting Cora go as well.
If ownership decided that Bloom is not the person for the job, what's the reason for keeping him for 3 more weeks? Bloom gets the chance to start his job search early, and the Sox give themselves time to jump start their own search.
The offseason gets busy quickly in November, with GM meetings, qualifying offers, Rule 5 draft deadlines, etc. Seems like there will be a number of candidates considered, so may as well get started now.
I can see both of these as reasons. But it feels unseemly to do it in season instead of after, as most such firings go.
Of course if they name a replacement quickly that will prove Jezza right.
It just feels like a Look At Us doing something move to me
I think if they knew they were doing it no matter how the season ended, the timing was correct.
1) Can start publicly looking for a replacement.
2) Lets the world of potential new employers for Bloom know he's available, giving him more options.
3) Seems like some people knew this was coming. Why try to keep it a secret for 3 more weeks & risk the news coming out from a 3rd party in an embarrassing way?
1) Can start publicly looking for a replacement.
2) Lets the world of potential new employers for Bloom know he's available, giving him more options.
3) Seems like some people knew this was coming. Why try to keep it a secret for 3 more weeks & risk the news coming out from a 3rd party in an embarrassing way?
Agreed, especially if the talk about taking time to name a replacement turns out to be accurate.
So firing earlier than traditional is the new Market Inefficiency? I like it!
This is also why I'm not expecting the Sox to go as heavy in SPs in free agency as some believe they will. They'll probably target one top tier guy (very likely Yamamoto) and try to acquire a young cost controlled arm. And then everyone will freak out over the prospects involved.
There is some noise that DD was in trouble over the Sale extension - which management resisted. At the end of '19 they had the highest payroll in baseball - and their best player was a year a way from free agency.
Yes please. Torn on whether it should be done now to give Cora the best chance to find another job and Sox the best chance to find a replacement, or see out the season in order to keep the boat afloat. Still some tickets to sell.
OTOH, Cora might be safe for now since the new PoBO would want to choose his own guy. Unless they hire the PoBO quickly, it will be late in the managerial shuffle and all the best candidates might be gone.
My question is whether the Front Office thought the team was going to be better than this? I had assumed that Bloom identified the likely trajectory of the team, which was an anticipated finish around .500 with a slim chance of a 2021 performance if everything broke right, and the Front Office bought in to that trajectory with the plan of being much more competitive next year.
So, either Bloom anticipated something better than this performance and under performed, which seems unlikely considering his moves during the season, or the Front Office decided to change course.
So, either Bloom anticipated something better than this performance and under performed, which seems unlikely considering his moves during the season, or the Front Office decided to change course.
Nothing the FO does right now is showing a direction. As much as Bloom was pooped on for “not having a plan”, it was actually quite clear that HE did have one. It required some patience which apparently the FO ran out of. But it also seems clear that Bloom was brought in to carry out the FO’s plan. So now the FO seems to me like someone that always wants what others have- the dog that drops it’s snack trying to get the others.
IMO- the Bloom Plan needed one more year to truly blossom. If it failed in ‘24 then I would 100% get behind his dismissal. The process of getting there, I felt everyone knew MAY produce a winner with luck (‘21) but it wasn’t part of the long term plan.
That said, If the new management doesn’t get to the playoffs next year it’s going to be-at least to me- a horrible decision by the FO, as I’m 100% a believer that they were only 1 top starting pitcher and a second tier starter away from a great team which seemed like the direction they were pointed
IMO- the Bloom Plan needed one more year to truly blossom. If it failed in ‘24 then I would 100% get behind his dismissal. The process of getting there, I felt everyone knew MAY produce a winner with luck (‘21) but it wasn’t part of the long term plan.
That said, If the new management doesn’t get to the playoffs next year it’s going to be-at least to me- a horrible decision by the FO, as I’m 100% a believer that they were only 1 top starting pitcher and a second tier starter away from a great team which seemed like the direction they were pointed
Perhaps this is so, and I'm with you on what you hope for, to avoid the organizational mood swings, which are going on 12 years now post Theo. Surely they can find someone who has the capacity to balance building a farm while also acquiring top line ML talent to build a championship caliber team. I mean - it really can't be so impossible that you have to keep swinging through "types" of GMs/CBOs (whatever), can it?
Jeff Passan on Sportsnet last night:
Let's look at the Xander Bogaerts contract right now. I've been talking with executives this week and I've been asking them to look at their models to see where Wander Franco is in their model. I was curious because I was told by a team that Wander Franco is by far the greatest surplus value of any player in Major League Baseball right now. While I was asking that question, I was also asking who was the most underwater. And across the board, Xander Bogaerts is the most underwater contract in baseball right now. So if the Red Sox avoided signing Xander Bogaerts to what may be an absolutely terrible deal, I don't think you can blame Chaim Bloom for that.
The problem with what Chaim Bloom faced—and listen, he has flaws as a general manager, there were things that he did bad and he did wrong, no doubt about that—but what he was asked to do was essentially rebuild the farm system and win at the same time while staying under the CBT threshold. Two of those things at once are pretty tough. All three of them, it's damn near impossible to do at the same time.
Their farm system is really good now. I don't think people outside of the industry appreciate how strong it is and how Orioles-like it is like in terms of the position players they've got, but they've got a lot of guys who are going to be dudes...Their lineup is going to be scary in a little while. Pitching-wise they're not great—but how many organizations are? Developing pitching is one of the hardest things to do.
Let's look at the Xander Bogaerts contract right now. I've been talking with executives this week and I've been asking them to look at their models to see where Wander Franco is in their model. I was curious because I was told by a team that Wander Franco is by far the greatest surplus value of any player in Major League Baseball right now. While I was asking that question, I was also asking who was the most underwater. And across the board, Xander Bogaerts is the most underwater contract in baseball right now. So if the Red Sox avoided signing Xander Bogaerts to what may be an absolutely terrible deal, I don't think you can blame Chaim Bloom for that.
The problem with what Chaim Bloom faced—and listen, he has flaws as a general manager, there were things that he did bad and he did wrong, no doubt about that—but what he was asked to do was essentially rebuild the farm system and win at the same time while staying under the CBT threshold. Two of those things at once are pretty tough. All three of them, it's damn near impossible to do at the same time.
Their farm system is really good now. I don't think people outside of the industry appreciate how strong it is and how Orioles-like it is like in terms of the position players they've got, but they've got a lot of guys who are going to be dudes...Their lineup is going to be scary in a little while. Pitching-wise they're not great—but how many organizations are? Developing pitching is one of the hardest things to do.
Listening to Name Redacted podcast and Jared saying that the reasons they let go Chaim had more to do with his indecisiveness at the deadline and them not believing he was the guy to lead the organization to take the next step then the results on the field.
So if Sale, Story, Whitlock and Houck all come back and are good…. Is he still fired for “indecision”?
I'm kinda indifferent on this one, but the timing is a little odd. Why bother doing this so close to the end of the season?
I've also been under the impression that Bloom was taking his marching orders from ownership, so not having a compelling on-field product while building the farm system and hitting payroll targets was the main focus. He'll go down as the public face of the organization not wanting to pay market value for Mookie, but likely had as much choice about that as Ben Cherington did when Bobby Valentine was hired.
I've also been under the impression that Bloom was taking his marching orders from ownership, so not having a compelling on-field product while building the farm system and hitting payroll targets was the main focus. He'll go down as the public face of the organization not wanting to pay market value for Mookie, but likely had as much choice about that as Ben Cherington did when Bobby Valentine was hired.
Angels could 100% use him. Can't imagine Arte Moreno having the patience for a proper rebuild, though.
I'd exercise a little caution with our local sports betting mascot and his take factory. Unlike reporters, there's nothing that compels Jared Carrabis to verify or corroborate the information he's given. I just listened to the first ten minutes of that podcast and he just seems very intent to prove that he's got inside info that reporters don't (which is marketing/PR). Add to that that DraftKings (his employer) is in a partnership with the Red Sox ownership, and yeah, I'll pass.
Upon reflection for 24ish hours, if it isn't the Mookie/P.R. misdirection theory(and I'm not totally convinced it isn't, at least partly), I really think it's as simple as he did what they brought him in to do, and they now want a different talent profile to finish building the Major League club. I think that blaming the on-field performance of the Sox is nothing but deflection and red meat for the fans. And I think the deadline indecisiveness wasn't a factor by itself, but rather another data point that he might be too conservative to execute the aggressive next steps needed. Whether I agree or not, it at least makes some sense to me.
There certainly has been a plan, and Chaim has executed it effectively. There now is a plan for the next chapter, and they question whether his skill set is best for that. So start looking for the new person right away, and let Chaim start looking for his next rebuilding gig.
There certainly has been a plan, and Chaim has executed it effectively. There now is a plan for the next chapter, and they question whether his skill set is best for that. So start looking for the new person right away, and let Chaim start looking for his next rebuilding gig.
Agree, included that for context but it is a little confusing. My interpretation was that the note about Xander's contract was a sidebar to some other research he'd been doing about Franco, whose surplus value is now erased.
Color me skeptical that this ownership group would have been just fine with punting at the 2022 trade deadline even if Chaim had pulled off a Sale trade and gotten under the luxury tax. The team was just a few weeks removed from having better than 50% odds of making the playoffs. Fan reaction would have been brutal and we know how Henry and Werner react to that. Maybe a Sale trade is coupled with a few acquisitions that improve the team's performance, but in all likelihood the Sox are not in contention in September, attendance and ratings plummet, and the media skewers the team for not acting like a big market club. Bloom probably would have just gotten himself fired a year sooner.
The whole Xander thing involves a little bit of obfuscation. I haven't seen people skewer the Red Sox for not giving him the San Diego deal, any criticism on that front has been in terms of not locking him in earlier on lesser money (that he presumably would have taken). There are a lot of conditionals involved in that criticism for sure, but I think Passan is defending something that I don't think people actually had a problem with.
Chawson's post about the Passan comments underscores what I was just about to write. This move rattles my faith a bit for the very first time when it comes to the ownership group. What the firing illustrates is how impossible a situation the Sox have created for themselves by refusing to fully embrace an actual rebuild. The Dodgers do, of course, get an amazing amount of credit for their ability to execute something similar a decade ago, but they were doing it in a division that, at the time, wasn't nearly as strong as the AL East is today. It's hilarious to me to see the reporting that Bloom was fired for indecisiveness at the deadline--why was he trying to be both a buyer and a seller at the same deadline...? Perhaps because the team that employed him was demanding that he be both a rebuilder and a championship contender in the same window. It's a very difficult task. In any case, Bloom did a really good job overhauling and strengthening the system despite these constraints. And if history is any guide, ownership will now go get themselves a Dombrowski 2.0 to blast open a three-to-five year window of championship contention. Here's hoping they've learned their lesson and, at the end of it, won't have again left the cupboards bare.
The issue is that the other take is also presuming things that may not be based in reality.. I don't think many folks have issue with the Sox not giving Xander the SD deal. But a lot of folks are hanging their hat on a hypothetical scenario where Bogaerts would agree to either another short term extension before hitting FA or a slightly souped up Story offer and I don't think we can honestly assume that either. He already did this for the Sox and built in the opt-out into the deal.
Basically, both of the polar opposites here are operating from a hypothetical that wasn't seemingly happening, and the midground that "Xander built in an opt-out and wanted to test the market unless the Sox gave him a drastically over market extension offer before GA" seems to be most realistic to me. I don't know if we'll ever know tbh.
Is the claim here that the DD era was not successful, because the “cupboards were bare” (ignoring the presence of Devers, Casas, Bello, Duran, Rafaela, Houck, etc. in those cupboards, or course). Because I thought the goal was “to win as many championships before you die”, “flags fly forever”, etc.
The Red Sox won 93, 93, 108, and 84 regular season games in those years. It wasn’t terrible .
One theory -- the owners are more or less happy with the job that Chaim did, and firing him is just a PR move. They view the young Ivy League execs as fungible and will just hire the next one who will do basically the same things Chaim would have done, only without the soil of "he traded Mookie".
So, if when Bloom had been hired, he came out and said, “I have a plan, it involves 3 last place finishes, including ones in years 3 and 4, but in year 5 there’s a plan - a really good plan! - to suddenly compete” (and can anyone here squint and see that plan unless it involves immaculate health or the ability to sign the phenom pitcher everyone else is going after), would people sign up for that?
And people keep talking about an imaginary compromise Xander extension, at roughly 6 or 7 years totaling $175-200 million, as though that A) was a sure thing and B) is somehow a good deal. I like Bogaerts and we'll have to see how it turns out, but I genuinely don't think that one made a ton of sense either. The Yankees have an aging .320 wOBA infielder they signed to 6/$90 and they'd love a do-over there. I'm not sure signing Xander, a worse defender than LeMahieu, to twice that dollar value was a great move.
Remember too that there was this study from Bill James (via Sports Info Solutions) last year that suggested that Xander "ranks as the player with the highest injury risk in 2023 by our injury tool's projections."
Wholeheartedly agree. My only point is that Passan was arguing against a group that doesn't really exist: the people who thought Bloom should have given Xander the Padres deal.
Did we all forget the outrage the last time the sox publicly said they were having a bridge year?
I would have been fine with it. But the media? Fat chance.
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