The Red Sox have fired Chaim Bloom
- Thread starter Smiling Joe Hesketh
- Start date
- Status
With the amount of money that would be changing hands in the transaction, surely ownership knew that the Rangers were offering to take the Sale contract. They could have told Bloom to make the trade even if he didn’t like the return. This makes Henry and Co. look just as incompetent, even if they were hoping it would just make Bloom look bad.
Let me ask one question. Has there been condescension the last few years by those would be deemed “pro-Bloom” against those who would be seen more as anti-Bloom over the last few years?
I don’t post enough on this board to be labeled one of the “Usual Suspects”. I also avoid almost all of the Mookie discussion because it’s been beat to death over and over and over.
I also happen to think that brain dead posts are generally equal between pro and anti-Bloom….
All of that said, the 5 posts between NickEsasky all read to me as very condescending and self congratulatory for really no reason other than to feel superior.
NickEsasky has been posting here FOREVER, I don’t think he needs an explanation of what makes SoSH “better than” or how this site cut its teeth.
Of course, I am not always right. I would have said JM3 was unreasonably pro Bloom before this thread but I’ve found myself agreeing with pretty much everything that he’s posted in the last 48 hours.
I just don’t see the need for the smarter than you act or trying to denigrate posters that don’t agree with you 100% as mouth breathers or stupid.
99.99% of the posters here are smart and knowledgeable fans. I don’t love the pissing contest for some people to position themselves as smarter and better fans.
I’ll get off of my soap box now
I also happen to think that brain dead posts are generally equal between pro and anti-Bloom….
All of that said, the 5 posts between NickEsasky all read to me as very condescending and self congratulatory for really no reason other than to feel superior.
NickEsasky has been posting here FOREVER, I don’t think he needs an explanation of what makes SoSH “better than” or how this site cut its teeth.
Of course, I am not always right. I would have said JM3 was unreasonably pro Bloom before this thread but I’ve found myself agreeing with pretty much everything that he’s posted in the last 48 hours.
I just don’t see the need for the smarter than you act or trying to denigrate posters that don’t agree with you 100% as mouth breathers or stupid.
99.99% of the posters here are smart and knowledgeable fans. I don’t love the pissing contest for some people to position themselves as smarter and better fans.
I’ll get off of my soap box now
Over the top negativism is easily seen by the rational. The converse is not true. So from the perspective of those who can't stop bitching about end results because they can't disentangle multiple simultaneous threads of cause and effect, yes. I'm sure "there been condescension the last few years by those would be deemed “pro-Bloom” against those who would be seen more as anti-Bloom over the last few years."
Emphasis mine.
The thing is: I honestly don't think there's been a single "Bloom Fan-Boy"...but there have been LOTS of people saying absolutely
Oh, come on. I am honestly stunned if you really believe that last paragraph. I am not sure if it’s naïveté, only wanting to see things from your point of view or what but that’s a crazy opinion.
I’ve had DM conversations with very reasonable posters, all of them long time members, who have talked with me about how they don’t post on the main board at all because they don’t like the pile on that happens when they express a negative Bloom opinion. And these posters aren’t the type who love to post “hot takez”.
I am very interested in a list of "Bloomers"...Shit, if I'm one, I'd like to know. But "they don’t like the pile on that happens when they express a negative Bloom opinion" is exactly what someone expressing a meritless position would whine about. And quite frankly, one cannot evaluate him on a single metric - whatever that metric may be. Those that try to do so are rightfully dismissed as non-serious thinkers.
.
To the extent that Bloom furthered my goals, I was in favor of it. But it's really more the concept of what we're doing than who the actual person was. People are fallible - some more than others.
I'm very (perhaps unreasonably?) pro building a sustainable juggernaut, patience, intelligent nuanced baseball conversation, & enjoying baseball & not letting it have a negative impact on your life.
To the extent that Bloom furthered my goals, I was in favor of it. But it's really more the concept of what we're doing than who the actual person was. People are fallible - some more than others.
I mean, I certainly haven’t been even keeled in this thread but you led off calling the views of a segment of people here “incredibly stupid”
Last edited:
I’m far less active on the main board than a lot of folks. But it’s been very clear to me, a Bloom-agnostic, that there was a pervasive response of condescension to those who reasonably questioned Bloom decisions.
A lot of responses that were essentially “you’re not smart enough to understand [X] but I am”.
I get jumping on someone posting dumb crap. But there were many times when people brought up reasonable issues and were given a lot of snark in return.
Speier reports that the Rangers would have taken on “all but $14 million” of the roughly 2.3/$64 million left of Sale’s contract. And that the trade offer was after the line drive injury but before the bike accident.
Consider this. Sale looked really good in his season debut on July 12, sitting 94-95 for the first time since 2018. If the pressure from ownership to make the postseason in 2022-23 was as strong as we now know it was, and the team was in dire need of pitching, wouldn’t trading Sale away for salary relief give you some pause? If you’re one-third likely to make the postseason and he’s due back in September, do you just give away 2+ seasons of a former ace who just worked his way all the way back?
Through June 1st of this season, Sale was dominant. Then he got hurt again and of course we all wish Bloom had made that trade, but I’m not sure it was a slam dunk at the time. It seems like something most people would decry as a “Rays” move, one you do to save money alone.
Not me. I’ve wanted to dump Sale for so so long. I didn’t care how good he looked in the rare times he pitched. He couldn’t stay healthy and he’ll never stay healthy. I’m a Bloom agnostic but I would have applauded aggressively had he dumped his salary last year. Or the year before that. Or the year before that.
My initial reaction to the Sale stuff was that it's fireable offense if true, but that no team could be that dumb.
Now if it's ~50 mil the team would have eaten instead of the whole thing --- a bit better I guess but it's still pretty bad. And the Rangers, the way they have spent money the past 24 months...it's becoming more plausible that Chris Sale took two different PBOs down with him.
Now if it's ~50 mil the team would have eaten instead of the whole thing --- a bit better I guess but it's still pretty bad. And the Rangers, the way they have spent money the past 24 months...it's becoming more plausible that Chris Sale took two different PBOs down with him.
The $14m thing makes me feel a lot saner & like my perception of reality isn't completely out of whack. If I'm eating some I would probably want prospects that I could at least kind of squint & see some future in. Even if they're DSL flyers. No idea what their definition of "middling" is, though.
Knowing it’s more like 50m instead of 64m makes a lot of it make more sense. I dunno, I’m certainly more “ok” with the decision to move on from Bloom if we lost the opportunity to take Sale off the books because the prospects weren’t satisfactory. I think chawson is right that he’d get criticism but it seems like the right move to me. 25m extra in last years offseason would’ve been quite useful if spent right. As it would be this off-season. And it’d have been the right move in my boneheaded view (provided all needed parties signed off)
Last edited:
Not true. He had 4 bad or worse starts in April. He followed that up with a really nice dominant stretch from 4/30 to 5/26. He basically had one good month. He hasn’t gone past 5 IP since he returned and just got obliterated by the Orioles.
This is the Chris Sale experience and why we should have dumped him at the first opportunity.
I imagine a sociologist would have a field day with this. My impression has been that most of the "snark" was directed at people who couched their "reasonable issues" in ways that helped provoke conflict - not with people per se, but with thought processes. And I freely admit the converse is also likely true.
And - again - I am very much a Bloom agnostic. There are lots of things to bitch about. But precious few of them - if any - occurred in a vacuum.
I know that the perception of Sale at the time wasn’t what it was now, but if another team was offering a pair of shoelaces to take 50 mil of Chris Sale, you accept a deal that is 99.99% perfect and forget the .01%.
None of this is changes my view that his overall approach was sound, but if this is true, I’m glad the Sox are moving on.
Last edited:
I think you still probably do it, but it's no longer a no-brainer (without hindsight) if the prospects are literal shoelaces. $14m is real money.
Totally agreed. If that stuff is true, Bloom was a bad GM for this team going forward.
Ehh, it was 42 degrees and heavy rain on his first start when he got bombed against Baltimore. The other games were less bad, and shaking off some rust. Even counting his April, he had 1.3 fWAR from April 1 to June 1. So did Ohtani and Pablo Lopez.
I mean, whatever. Not a hill I’d die on and I’d probably have done it too. But I’m surprised that it’s so clear cut for people. An extra $25M would have been nice to play with last offseason but at this moment in time I’m glad we have Sale and not Rodón.
I'm not so sure about this, although I guess with the current contract situations, maybe? Rodon still has his stuff. Sale looks like his stuff is continuously declining.
From a pure baseball perspective, they should have been dumping everything that wasn't tied down at the '22 deadline, including of course Sale.
I've always gotten the impression that there was an organizational mandate not to be seen as giving up or tanking due to the market.
Whether that's true, or whether Bloom was just too stubborn to make trades, who knows? & it's pretty moot at this point.
Maybe Chaim throws a little extra money last offseason for Kodai Senga. We’ll never really know. I think $25M is a lot to work with. We were never going to outbid the Yankees for Rodon, like you, I’d rather have the short bad deal over the longer one.
Curious what part of the last year of baseball acquisitions would make you say this.
Hand up! I just thought the things he was good at, building from below, was all part of the right way to go about really trying to build a lasting thing. I don’t need instant results.
Honestly, that’s incredibly fair.
I’ve had back and forths with a few posters on that topic (that Bloom actually wasn’t being evaluated for his MLB on-field results, the ownership didn’t care about MLB record) and that argument struck me as almost “bizarro WEEI”. Like, we are so past what the WEEI caller might care about, we don’t even care about what happens with the actual Red Sox team!
I didn’t address anyone specifically, but it doesn’t matter, I didn’t need to use that phrasing
This is exactly what’s been expressed to me.
And, just to be clear, @8slim wasn’t one of the posters I was referencing DM’ing with in my earlier post.
I don’t believe that report. If there’s one thing Bloom liked, it was an injured pitcher. The more injured the better. This slander flies in the face of reality; one of Bloom’s strengths was sizing up a pitcher, sensing his potential for DL time, and pulling the trigger when he was satisfied that said pitcher was just days away from a sore arm, tweaked back, filleted finger, or brain worms.
I wish I had a Jeter Downs rookie card for every mouthbreather in this thread who is mouthbreathy enough to believe that Bloom would trade away Chris Sale, a man who had given this team so many missed starts. I’d be a thousandaire.
Last edited:
Right, it's like there is a significant portion of SoSH that is ok with more or less throwing away the last 4 years of our lives in exchange for mediocre baseball and an if-you-squint chance of being good in 2024 or 2025? If they weren't going to truly contend for the last 4 years, they should have tanked much harder. I don't care that they've been ~.500 the last two years, that's not interesting to me, I'd rather be ~.400 and hoarding prospects and picks and trading the likes of Sale, Paxton, JDM, Duvall, Verdugo, etc.
Boomer Bloomer (part-time) here. Personally, I am more of a Belichick-er and a Brad Stevens-er than a Bloomer, but anyway....
The Sale non-trade by itself was unlikely to be the sole cause of Bloom's firing. It's that it was part of a larger body of work that made up Bloom's actions during his time here. Every GM will have missed opportunities at some point in their careers. Just that Bloom was in a position where the results matter, a lot, often times more than the thought process that got them there. One missed trade is an error that befalls all; two missed trades it starts to become something to watch; more than it can become a pattern and then a trend. If there were fans in the seats and the Sox were contending, then likely all is forgiven.
What I am trying to say is that it was unlikely to be a single non-trade that got Bloom to be shown the door.
While tanking in baseball works to some extent (look at the Orioles and Astros), it may not be the best and/or most efficient method for a big market club like the Red Sox. And there are plenty of cases where tanking has taken much, much longer than the local fanbase would put up with. The Royals are about to be horrible for the 6th straight season. The Tigers serial tanking has led to a 0.463 season thus far, and that is with 2 pathetic teams in the same division, one of which (White Sox) everyone thought was done tanking.
Every team will have to go through a reset period every now and then. The Yankees are there now. As are the Cardinals and Giants, two of the most successful franchises of the 21st century.
The Sale non-trade by itself was unlikely to be the sole cause of Bloom's firing. It's that it was part of a larger body of work that made up Bloom's actions during his time here. Every GM will have missed opportunities at some point in their careers. Just that Bloom was in a position where the results matter, a lot, often times more than the thought process that got them there. One missed trade is an error that befalls all; two missed trades it starts to become something to watch; more than it can become a pattern and then a trend. If there were fans in the seats and the Sox were contending, then likely all is forgiven.
What I am trying to say is that it was unlikely to be a single non-trade that got Bloom to be shown the door.
Getting to the ALCS would be considered contending in most seasons.
While tanking in baseball works to some extent (look at the Orioles and Astros), it may not be the best and/or most efficient method for a big market club like the Red Sox. And there are plenty of cases where tanking has taken much, much longer than the local fanbase would put up with. The Royals are about to be horrible for the 6th straight season. The Tigers serial tanking has led to a 0.463 season thus far, and that is with 2 pathetic teams in the same division, one of which (White Sox) everyone thought was done tanking.
Every team will have to go through a reset period every now and then. The Yankees are there now. As are the Cardinals and Giants, two of the most successful franchises of the 21st century.
Good post.
Agree that it appears there was a pattern that ultimately cost Bloom his job. None of us will ever know everything that went down, but it sure seems like ownership felt that he didn’t do enough, often enough, and successfully enough, to help the team at the major league level.
Also agree about tanking. Personally, I think tanking is dumb and unnecessary in baseball. Sure there are examples of teams that did it and came out the other side in good shape. But there are examples where it didn’t work out. And then what do you have to show for it? Many years of awful, fan-alienating baseball.
Big market teams have the luxury of waking and chewing gum at the same time. I believe that’s what Bloom was attempting to do. He just didn’t do well enough on one side of that equation. It happens, life goes on.
Rod Thorn. As a matter of fact, even Thorn jokes about how lucky he was that Jordan was still around with the third pick Thorn actually got booted a few months later so it's not like he got to enjoy the publicity and Jordan's success. By the way, tying it back to baseball, this just shows you how crazy Reinsdorf can be
Not Bloom specific, but the Dodgers and Yankees are the only franchises who have been successful at doing this in recent history. Other big market teams--Mets, Cubs, White Sox, Astros, Phillies, Nationals, Rangers, Braves have not. Maybe that just means that it's really hard to do, but I do find it interesting that it is far and away the exception for big market teams, not the norm.
The Jordan draft pick was done by Rod Thorn. A few months later he got fired and moved into the NBA Commissioners Office as the Dean of Discipline
Ah, a rational, reasonable response. I would argue that DD should have been let go because of the way that the farm system was in shambles. Chaim rebuilt it. However, he seems as if he is an exceptional farm director but a mediocre, at best, Director of Baseball Operations. It's time to bring in a better overall leader.
Building a perennial contender is extraordinarily difficult no matter what method one tries.
One of my frustrations here the last couple years is trying to engage with folks who seem to think there’s “one true way” to build a strong franchise.
There’s not. One can get to a good outcome through various paths. But ALL paths are difficult.
I guess the only partial disagreement I have with you is that I do think that it is nearly impossible to build a perennial contender in, today’s MLB, without having a pipeline of young, cost controlled players. Now, there are different strategies to achieving this, but even the Mets seem to be figuring this out.
Not just cost controlled players- you really need cost controlled pitching. The high end FA pitching marketplace is expensive and incredibly risky- the less money you have to invest in it, the better. Freddie Freeman and Carlos Rodon got pretty similar deals, after all.
If you have to get multiple pitchers from FA every year, it makes things really challenging.
If you have to get multiple pitchers from FA every year, it makes things really challenging.
I don’t think I am “Bloomer” but agree that, viewed from a real time perspective, it is not as obvious as people here have it. But I also don’t think we need to limit ourselves to real time perspectives when judging firings. I think “how’d that work out” in hindsight is a legitimate question in deciding whether to keep an GM. And it worked out pretty bad. If he turns out to be a 4.0 WAR player in 2024, maybe we reconsider.
I am really curious though about Semper’s question. Where was ownership in this decision? Seems like the kind that they must have had some involvement in. I guess we will never know what really happened. Maybe Bloom was the loudest voice in the room and made it his hill to die on. Or maybe everyone thought he was a 2/$50m pitcher in 2023 and 2024 and so all deserve some blame.
- Status