Raquel Ferreira declining might actually be more concerning than the others declining. I mean she has better insight to any organizational dysfunction than any outside candidates
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So....who is the new GM/head of baseball ops?
- Thread starter moondog80
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That's crazy talk. If you're a legit candidate for GM/CBO or manager, then you'll be a legit candidate next year when more jobs open up. People turn down jobs in dysfunctional orgs all of the time, even when the position is what they want. Hell, Josh McDaniels walked from the same job in Indy that he eventually took in Vegas. There are definitely bad GM and manager jobs.
Some folks are at their PR peaks and need to grab the brass ring when it comes, and good luck to them. But not everyone needs to sell high.
Edit: I'm not beating the "Sox job is a bad one" drum with this post, just responding to that particular post.
“While I was grateful to be considered, I candidly told him that it’s not the right move for me right now when it doesn’t make sense for me and my family. I’m not closing the door on any future opportunity because things could be different for me a year or two from now.”
I guess maybe she's lying, but maybe she just means what she said.
What she said doesn't really mean anything, since she didn't explain why it doesn't make sense.
So obviously what we should do is guess at why and assume the worst.
I didn't say that this was a bad GM job, I'm just pointing out that there the Sox GM job might not be the plum role that a few people in here consider it to be and that isn't because of the evil media.
But there are definitely some bad GM and manager jobs. Would you like to manage or run the A's?
Alex Speier says James Click has talked to the Red Sox but withdrew his name due to family considerations.
You're free to do whatever you want, but I don't think the presence of the word "family" in a completely anodyne statement that doesn't actually say anything one way or the other means anything. And without any further information to the contrary, the fact that someone who has been in her role for years has no interest in this job certainly is worth examining.
Toboni would be an internal candidate I’d be very interested in promoting/retaining. Those were good drafts undertaken under very difficult situations, between the lost picks and the pandemic. Impressive!
Or her background is on the business side & they're maybe looking for someone more on the player evaluation side & it's a nice way for both sides to keep their current mutually beneficial relationship.
There are enough actual issues without manufacturing additional issues.
There are enough actual issues without manufacturing additional issues.
I think "family considerations" is the current polite way to say no.
Click knew what his family situation was before he interviewed. It's not like he thought it was a WFH job.
Well if her background is solely on the business side, then the fact that she's even being considered would also be a problem. Either way, it's extremely tiring that there's a contingent of people who try to shout down any speculation that might reflect negatively on the team as baseless clickbait perpetuated by the lazy, axe-grinding media.
Bummer; this was one of the external candidates I was quite hopeful of landing from the start of the process (Click and Byrnes were my two preferred choices of those outside the organization).
I also thought this was pretty funny. I picture a bunch of GMs sitting around on a Zoom call with the horrible stock backgrounds and it's pretty amusing though.
I don't know. I never considered Ms. Ferreira to be a died-in-the-wool baseball person. She is very good at the job she does, she's a little bit older, and she is self aware enough to know she can do the job she has very well and still serve her family. Maybe she doesn't want or need the headache of the top position.
If you were in your 50s and had enough money to retire, had a loving family, had a job you loved at a company that had been enourmously sussessful during your time with them, would you aspire to a higher position with more hours, more scrutiny, and more likelihood of being fired from that job?
I'm guessing he decided he wasn't interested when Kennedy introduced Alex Cora as "your future boss."
Well, if you don't interview her, the narrative is why are you interviewing all your other Assistant GMs but not her? & that would be a fair criticism because due to her place in the organization she has certainly earned an interview if she wants one, even if she is very unlikely to be the actual choice.
I agree there are certainly institutional issues that make this less appealing of a job than it should be. But people who are part of the institution should not really have an issue with that.
At this point I think it does seem more likely than not that Romero and Cora are going to run the show. Bloom must have been the problem and everything else is good.
If so, I can see why some outside candidates are reluctant to become the next Bloom.
If so, I can see why some outside candidates are reluctant to become the next Bloom.
Is Chaim Bloom available?
This is a team that, in a year where they purposely went below the tax, was still 12th in payroll. 6th in 2022. With a lot of young, cost-controlled players on their way through the system, and an apparent willingness to ratchet payroll back up in the next few years. Is it the most appealing job in MLB? No. But the count of ones that are is in single digits, and at most one or two of them will be available in a given year. If people don't want this job, even with the knowledge that the last few guys have been canned, something is wrong, and the front office needs to figure what that is. And fix it.
This is a team that, in a year where they purposely went below the tax, was still 12th in payroll. 6th in 2022. With a lot of young, cost-controlled players on their way through the system, and an apparent willingness to ratchet payroll back up in the next few years. Is it the most appealing job in MLB? No. But the count of ones that are is in single digits, and at most one or two of them will be available in a given year. If people don't want this job, even with the knowledge that the last few guys have been canned, something is wrong, and the front office needs to figure what that is. And fix it.
From afar it seems Sam Kennedy has Henry’s ear and so has carved out spots for him and Cora. If someone is willing to work within that they can interview.
Not sure how Kennedy got to Luccino level
Not sure how Kennedy got to Luccino level
Yeah, "family considerations" is basically saying "this job is not awesome enough that it's worth upsetting my family situation". They'll listen to the pitch in the hope that they're blown away, but then they're not.
Or, it could also mean, "I'm was never interested, but it's good for me to interview and have it known that I've been considered for the Red Sox and preemptively turned them down."
You never want to burn a bridge, but sometimes it's good for your current employer or others to know that you're in demand.
Bloom inherited Cora, how did that work out for him? If you take this job how much of baseball ops can you change? The Sox seem to be bloated with people that have been around for years. I am no longer a Cora fan after the last 2 years of collapse after the deadline. He should wear some of that stink. But he is a great playoff manager and guys seem to like him, watching the playoffs makes me appreciate his killer nature in must-win games.
Ownership needs to let the person they hire have a free hand, if not hire an internal person who is happy with the status quo.
Ownership needs to let the person they hire have a free hand, if not hire an internal person who is happy with the status quo.
Just ask Mike Hazen and Amiel Sawdaye how that works. Not that the season the D-Backs have had isn't reason enough, but just the possibility that the Sox might come calling (no idea if they actually did or not) probably gave them a bit more leverage to secure their extensions.
Good point. Always good when you're in demand. Also there's an underrated aspect to getting good at interviewing through practice, learning about how different orgs do business, etc.
This is from an article that Edes wrote on Ferreira back in 2017. It also mentions that she was pregnant when the Sox won in 2007 which would make her daughter around 16 now. Having a daughter, I can certainly testify that that age is not always the most fun for a parent and I wouldn't have wanted to be working the hours that GMs seem to work back then. The article goes on to talk about how good her relationship is with the players.
That seems at least as likely as any sort of doomsday. (not any more or less likely). She has a 15 or 16-year old daughter. Maybe she doesn't want to work even *more* hours -- or leave a job where she's figured out some sort of work-life balance -- for (as she said) "a couple of years down the road" when that child is done with high school.
EDIT: Beaten to the teen child angle.
Not picking your own people isn’t great but leaders/CEOs often inherit more management than they select.
Do we think if Bloom had a different manager he’d still have a job?
This might be a hot take but maybe. Cora wasn’t really hired by Bloom. So there was probably less loyalty there. Cora also seems to have more job security. Cora has had been with the organization a little longer than Chaim. So he can easily poison the well. It’s not nearly as optimal a situation for Chaim if his hires aren’t really his because he doesn’t have the same traditional power over them.
I have a request for those posting here. The Sox have TWO open positions here. It's pretty clear that certain candidates being mentioned are being mentioned in consideration for the CBO opening, but with some taking their names out of consideration there is now a wider variety of names now being tossed around now. I'll use Breslow as an example and I've no idea what job he's being suggested for. I think for discussion's sake it would be helpful (especially when suggesting new names in this thread) if folks might mention which position they are suggesting this person for.
I'd say probably. If Bloom had his own guy I think that they'd be on the same page and he'd understand that Bloom is building for the future. Cora doesn't want that, he wants to win now. So when Bloom left him with three starters in July and his bullpen was toast by August and never got the team any reinforcements, Cora was pissed and let the world know that this team wasn't his fault, it was all on Bloom's shoulders. It was a pretty ballsy gambit, though I would imagine that Cora is smart enough to know where Bloom's bosses' heads were at, but I think that it turned a lot sentiment in this town against Bloom (if it hadn't already done so).
Say Sam Fuld was managing the Sox now, he doesn't have Cora's reputation, he's probably aligned with Bloom's thinking and therefore doesn't trot out Barrclough to give up infinity runs against the Astros to make a statement. Honestly, I think that was the particular game that was the Bloom tipping point. In a lot of ways it perfectly encapsulated the Chaim Bloom experience.
I think it's certainly possible.
Cora has experienced a lot of success and a lot of the "glory days" here in Boston. He won a title as a player here in 2007, and won a title as a manager in 2018. He (I have to assume) has a pretty good relationship with guys from the 2007 team that are still part of the organization in some capacity (Ortiz, Varitek, etc). On the managerial side, he obviously won the 2018 title. Based on his loyalty to someone like Hernandez, I have to assume he lobbied for the retention of players like Bogaerts and Eovaldi, only to see them go elsewhere and be world's better than anything we threw out there at short stop and "not Bello" rotation pieces.
He also openly begged for players to be added at this deadline (I'm sure plenty of managers do) and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he communicated the pieces he wanted to FSG in some capacity.
Had Bloom hired a different manager that literally had no cachet in the organization and not experienced the success Cora had - and thus feeling empowered to in some ways criticize the decisions of the FO(case in point, I have literally no idea who the manager of the Oakland As is, and I don't care to look it up, but lets say we had that guy instead) then it's certainly possible FSG would have given Bloom another year because they might not have been placed in a position to "choose" one or the other.
(I'm not saying this is how I would have wanted things to turn out, I'm saying one can construct a narrative where with a different manager, things don't come down to a decision when they did).
Edit : @John Marzano Olympic Hero kind of beat me to it.
You can't treat a 60 game season as if it was a real season.
Not sure if she did a great job or not, but evaluating the Marlins based on essentially a third of a season is silly. They lost 105 games in their last full season.
The last time the franchise won more than 80 games was in 2009. 2023 was the most successful season they have had in 20 years.
It's a garbage franchise that doesn't spend money, just making the playoffs in a real season is a significant accomplishment.
Fair enough. I was pretty convinced it's as simple as Bloom making his own MLB bed, but you (and BGB and Big Papi) make a good case. Perhaps on the other side, Bloom may have felt more invested in/responsible for his manager, and been more willing to meet in the middle when it comes to the big club.
I'm in the camp that says Ms. Ferreira is being authentic in what she said. Reminds me of an interview I once saw with Tom Poston where he said (paraphrasing) "I'm not a leading man, so playing second banana to Bob Newhart on a hit show is a pretty sweet gig."
Some folks are just satisfied with who they are and where they're at in life.
Some folks are just satisfied with who they are and where they're at in life.
I have been looking closely at the Baltimore set up because overhauling that organization under Angelos is an incredible job. I'm not suggesting that working for FSG is the same as working for Angelos family, but if you are a core part of the group that executed a (thus far) successful teardown-rebuild there, I have to assume you've learned a ton about how to reform an organization.
I ultimately landed on Mejdal as the better candidate because he had a very successful engineering career outside of baseball (Lockheed Martin, NASA), worked his way up from entry level with the Cardinals, became indispensable for the Astros, and appears to be the architect of the O's analytics program and decision making processes. The caveats here are about his role on some of the Astros misbehavior - hacking the Cardinals, what he knew about the cheating, and what he contributed to the er...problematic professional culture in the front office.
Mejdal is also rumored to be on the Mets' shortlist. He's 100% worth offering an interview if only to pick his mind about how he assesses the Red Sox at present. Before hiring, you'd want to be comfortable that he won't bring that old Astros culture with him.
Back to Rosenbaum, I think she's also worth a close look and an interview in order to understand the scope her responsibilities and expertise. Her job titles in scouting and operations are enticing, but she would seem to be (from the outside) the junior member of the Os' front office leadership. In an interview, I'd really like to hear who she'd recruit to build out her team.
Agreed, I've passed on "better" career opportunities because they didn't fit in with my family situation. In fact, I once took what might be considered a lesser position because it was what was best for my family at the time. Did I leave money on the table? Without a doubt. Any regrets? Not one.
At the risk of adding nothing to this conversation other than a "like" this is me as well. I've stayed with government work when a private job would have given me a lot more money. Why? Because I could pick my kids up from school, coach their teams etc. etc. Not all money (or titles or fame etc.) is good money.
He had me at "A former NASA engineer and blackjack dealer . . . ."
baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/big-fish-sig-mejdal-the-baltimore-orioles-number-one-numbers-cruncher-brings-the-franchise-to-the-new-frontier/
Does she have young kids? Does the job involve a lot of additional travel beyond what she currently does? I had two job offers involving my current rather calm one and a slightly sexier version which involved potential weeks away while I had a newborn. Easy choice (to stay married).
I feel like there is some tendency to view people in the GM search a bit like they were players, driven by competition and fame and huge money swings and on-field roles, when in fact we are talking about people who mostly look at their computer or talk on the phone in an office. Assuming the money doesn't change too much, I'm not sure one job looks all that different from another, in which case family stuff probably drives a lot of decisions.
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I think as big a part of this is the reality that when Cora steps down in a couple of years, he's moving into the front office. So any outside person coming in knows that he won't really get to choose his own manager (because Cora will have a hand in choosing his replacement) and that he'll be giving on-the-job training to a guy that's eventually going to force a front office shakeup. Put another way, the next DBO looks like he's guaranteed to be toppled in four years. I can see that being a real obstacle for Boston bringing in someone from the outside.
All in all I think it's probably better if they just hand the reins over to Romero and Toboni as they've done a lot of the work involved in restocking the system and, as long term employees, would likely find it easier to work with Cora while Cora might, in working with them, feel satisfied with a Special Assistant title and not force either man out of their job.
Family considerations could also be not exposing her family to the fame and inevitable criticism that come with the job.
Are we calling pure speculation "reality" now? We have no firm proof that the plan is truly to move Cora up into the front office in the near future. I've said this before, but if ownership is that committed to Cora going forward, why is he still on a lame duck contract? It makes very little sense that they'd do such a broad and robust search for what is essentially a seat warmer when the guy the seat is being kept warm for isn't locked up beyond this coming season.
I'm sure that the situation with this front office is complex and complicated enough to cause some candidates to turn it down. The idea that the succession plan for five years down the road is in place and they're just looking to bridge the gap is bordering on conspiracy theory.
I'm in complete agreement. Have also turned down more lucrative roles with better titles in order to balance quality of life. Hope I didn't give the impression of disbelief in what she wrote. What I'm saying is that often there's a number or something so great that you go for it anyway. Like you listen to their pitch, thinking "I'm really going to have to be blown away here to move", and then you are. My guess is that we're seeing some of that here, or rather the lack thereof. Org with rich history, including one of investing in salary and farm, but they're not blowing anyone away.
It's a sample. & it's a bit more meaningful than a normal 60 game stretch because it was known that would be the entirety of the season & teams behaved accordingly. I mentioned in a previous post that you can discount it as you wish. They had a pretty excellent pitching staff that year. They were also a terrible run differential team that year. Even worse than this year when they had the 21st best run differential in baseball with the 22nd highest payroll in baseball.
There were 4 teams this season with lower payrolls than the Marlins, but a better run differential:
#23 Reds 19th
#26 Guardians 18th
#27 Rays 4th
#28 Orioles 6th
One can certainly argue that the Marlins are a garbage franchise & that being part of that franchise adds an extreme degree of difficulty, but I don't really think sneaking into the post season on a 1-off & getting swept in the WC round is a "significant accomplishment". Now if she brought them back the next 2 years, or even 1 of the next 2 years, I agree that would be an impressive accomplishment, but for now that's somewhat incomplete, & always will be as they didn't want her in charge of baseball operations anymore for whatever reason.
I was listening to a podcast, Off the Pike, and Julian McWilliams talked a lot about how Cora loved DD and Cora would bring up DD long after DD was gone. Cora liked the experience of DD asking him what he needed and then DD delivering it rather quickly. From Cora's perspective, DD was gold. Compare that to Bloom. Bloom had a different edict, so Cora isn't getting all the things he ordered. It was the cliche of going from Amazon to Wish. And Cora is clearly really well respected by the Red Sox organization.
I mean, we all remember DD's tenure. The vibe was "I got the money, you got the free agent, let's go."
I mean, we all remember DD's tenure. The vibe was "I got the money, you got the free agent, let's go."
For all these candidates, getting experienced people in the building to talk about processes is more interesting to me than focusing so much on results that depend in part on uncontrollable variables.
Hard to assess who the best candidates are with only a partial picture.
Hard to assess who the best candidates are with only a partial picture.
No, we don't have firm proof. Just Cora's statements that he wants to move into a front office roll eventually and the fact that Bloom lost his power struggle with Cora. And this is exactly what outside candidates are seeing. Which is why I'm fine with them promoting Romero and Toboni because I don't think that this would be as big a deal to them.
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