The Red Sox have fired Chaim Bloom
- Thread starter Smiling Joe Hesketh
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People say all kinds of stuff, but I don't think it was, as was said, "the prevailing wisdom" of the board.
As long as we all admit that if David Roberts was thrown out at second in Game 4 of the ALCS he would have been on the hot seat for getting swept by the Yankees.
A lot of this is just sheer luck.
If the rationale for firing Bloom was that the results suck, I don’t understand why Kennedy said they expect to keep Cora as manager.
As a side note, I would think axing Chaim will make it even harder for Hal to keep Cashman and Boone another year. Maybe Cash could fill Chaim’s shoes???
As a side note, I would think axing Chaim will make it even harder for Hal to keep Cashman and Boone another year. Maybe Cash could fill Chaim’s shoes???
I'm just bearish on Romero because of his injury history combined with his poor on-field production. He had back issues that kept him out for the first couple months of the season. Then he strained his back again. He has a sub-.700 OPS across two minor league seasons, driven by a low BABIP and poor power (I'll concede that park factors and back issues can play a role). My point is that the hit rate on prospects is low enough without adding chronic back issues this early in his career. I'll be elated if Romero is ready for the Fall Performance Program and comes back strong next year. But as it stands right now, his stock is way down.
It's a little weird. I think you can keep Cora only under three circumstances:
1) the club is convinced the team's performance is due to a collection of fatally flawed players, that they're going to get rid of by trade (blowing up the club essentially.)
2) the club is convinced that Bloom somehow tied Cora's hands in-game, or via coaching, and that Cora will, with a free hand, get better results out of the players.
3) polaroids.
Because otherwise, this is just going to be the exact same go-around with 2 or 3 new key players.
In the offseason Chaim signed multiple relievers (Kenley Jansen, Chris Martin) another starter (Kluber) and multiple position players (Duvall, Yoshida and Turner) and they were all great signings except for Kluber.
It's fine to not be that optimistic, but he's 19, despite the 1st injury made it to A+ this year, & was the 24th pick in the draft. If they're firing Bloom because Mikey Romero hasn't set the world on fire, those are some pretty crazy expectations for drafting success.
I personally am very bearish on Cutter Coffey... but I'm pretty sure the 2 best Red Sox 2nd round picks in the 10 years prior to the Bloom era were Sam Travis ('14) & Brandon Workman ('10).
Living up to Theo is an impossible standard, but what was he allowed to spend versus what Bloom was allowed to spend?
One addition to this -
I thought he’d get another shot in 2024 because to me they obviously weren’t going for it this year. And they were setting up for next year.
But they say that Bloom and ownership were expecting a contending team in 2023. That’s a little worrisome because they are right where most of us expected them to be. What were they seeing, exactly?
Thank you.
Yep.
I don't get how that squares with the Devers contract or the offer that they made to Bogaerts. If those people were arguing that he was initially brought in to slash payroll because the team was expensive and in steep decline overall (apart from the core of Benny, Bogey, Betts and (cough) Bradley), then it was a reasonable assumption for a short time, but change was coming at one price point or another.
Yeah, that always sounded like PR nonsense to me. I was convinced they were rebuilding while not daring to say it out loud. If their point is now "no, we were in GFIN mode," that's really ridiculous. Or they didn't tell Chaim. Or he was, as some suggest, unwilling to do the job he was tasked with, which is also bizarre.
That might be a condition presented to Cora to keep his job with the new administration
Cora won a title, with a historically overachieving team
Bloom hasn’t and has had underachieving teams
Yeah, I wish people would stop holding up Theo as a standard. Theo was great but even Theo couldn't do now what he did then. The system is designed to neuter big $ advantages.
Ironically, losing big is the best advantage a team can find.
It's dumb. Many of the same folks didn't even notice what a great year Yorke put up this year after having a similar injury-plagued year 2 (after a great year 1).
If you look hard enough for the bad in anyone, you can find something. Some folks are probably aching for Teel's 0-14 slump next year to complain about how his stock has tanked.
Cora has also managed those Bloom teams that have underachieved and Tampa teams Bloom was involved in generally overachieved so I'm not really sure what you're going for here...
I never thought Bloom was the right fit here. Theo returning would be amazing, but I doubt it. Hoping they spend some money and bring in some elite talent. Boston is too big a market to add guys off the scrap heap or constantly have reclamation project guys as the big signings.
I don't think this refutes the point. Teel was a blue-chipper who wasn't projected to reach the Red Sox, just like Mayer wasn't. The fact that Teel plays a premium position and fills an organizational need is a huge bonus. When he did fall, they did the "obvious" thing and picked him. I give them some credit for actually pulling the trigger and not overthinking it, but it wasn't four-dimensional chess where Bloom could flash his creative vision, like he did when he drafted Yorke and Jordan in a COVID year where scouting was difficult.
I give Bloom plenty of credit where it's due, and I'm anxious to see where the improved farm system leads. I just see Mayer and Teel as picks that happened on his watch because the MLB team was bad to mediocre, rather than as strategic coups. I'd feel the same way if they had drafted, say, Jordan Lawlar and Bryce Eldridge instead. I won't crucify Bloom if Mayer and Teel don't pan out, because they were no-brainers at the time.
Frankly, I'm more impressed that Bloom got Abreu and Valdez for Vazquez than I am that he took Mayer with the 4th pick in the 2021 draft because the Red Sox were a bottom-four team in 2020 and the Rangers and Tigers took pitchers. I'd be more impressed if Leiter had been available and presented Bloom with a real choice.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer. Mookie aside (which was FSG, not Bloom), I really disagree that any of those moves, or signing “Tampa retreads” was stupid. Is it also stupid that the Dodgers hired Andrew Friedman?
But I was specifically asking how it could be possible that you’ve been waiting for him to be fired since his literal hiring. Did you have some foreknowledge? Was it just because he happened to work in Tampa (a very successful organization)? I don’t get it.
I don’t know how you felt about Dombrowski’s hiring, but I’m curious (genuinely): what’s the difference between your (presumed) optimism then and the immediate pessimism at Bloom’s? Just experience?
So Carrabis says that Bloom is out, in part, for not pulling trigger on deals for Paxton, Sale and Verdugo at the break because Bloom did not like the prospects offered back, for Sale and Paxton in particular. Carribis opines further dishing on his many contacts it seems: who cares about the f'in prospects we get back! This is telling if it has any truth to it. Did the FO really want to drop more payroll at the break without caring much about the return in prospects or players, even though we already under the lux tax threshold and a couple games out of WC spot?
I am agnostic on Bloom but if we talking accountability I think it fair to look a few notches further up the food chain.
I am agnostic on Bloom but if we talking accountability I think it fair to look a few notches further up the food chain.
Coffey was only $59k underslot, but Mikey was $676k under. They made a lot of interesting very cheap pitcher picks (Hoppe, Brand, I. Coffey, Bolden) to make room for Roman ($1.8m over) & Brannon ($560k over).
& to some I think it's more arguable that Roman is their #1 than that he would be their #3.
Agreed. The ultimate grade on the farm will be there in 10 years probably and even then is probably dependent on the vision of whoever comes next - whether it's the next coming of Nomar or of Andy Marte
Paxton makes $4m this year. I can't imagine it would have been important for ownership to move on from him for financial purposes.
Alex Binelas also hit a homer in solidarity for Bloom & the JBJ trade naysayers (that was still a bad trade, but maybe the only one).
Why?
This year has totally sucked, but is a bit of an outlier.
I think the Sox being in the market for a new GM makes it even less likely that Cashman will get fired. Cashman is a good GM and I don't think the Yankees want him running the show in Boston.
Boone's probably gone though. But we'll see.
Yeah I'm mystified by posters asking "why not wait?" because it seems clear to me they want someone with an off-season plan they're happy with. If Bloom didn't have that, there's no reason to stick with him and make it harder for the next guy/gal to set up their off-season plan.
Sure - I don't want to minimize the talent he had. (Although I suppose I should point out that Pedro wasn't PEDRO by 2004, either - a 124 ERA+ starter is valuable but not a franchise cornerstone. And Trot had a back injury and only played about 50 games in '04.) I do agree with the larger point, though - they don't win in '04 without the pieces that Theo inherited.
But let's also not minimize the 2019 roster that was one year removed from winning 108 games. There were certainly impending payroll issues, true, but they also had peak JD and young-and-improving Xander and Devers as well solid, Trot-level players like Vaszquez and EdRo. That's still a pretty decent group to build a team around.
Perhaps. I probably shouldn't paint too broadly. But it did strike me in the "who gets fired" thread that there were a lot of posts about Bloom having a chance in 2024 to see his plan through to when the window opened, and I'm still a bit confused as to when we agreed that the team's plan was to tread water until a prospect window appeared rather than, say, treading water until the payroll logjam lessened last offseason.
See, this last part is where I'm lost. I have no idea how competitive ownership wanted the 2023 team to be. I only know that 1.) at the beginning of the offseason we heard how they were going to sign lots of players and be competitive and 2.) by the end they'd signed a whole bunch of older players and/or reclamation projects to short-term deals, plus Yoshida.
To be clear, I understand the rationale behind rebuilding and constructing a team this way. I do. But I think it's fair to ask if the bolded was actually the belief of the owners or just a happenstance resulting from Bloom not acquiring good enough players at the major league level.
I mean, sure, in signing Kluber, he fulfilled his promise of signing "a starter." But I don't think that when people heard he was signing a starter, they thought he meant a 37-year-old who's broken 100 innings once since 2018.
And Duvall's been great...but he's only played 79 games this year because he was hurt.
Those were good signings. And yet the team seems headed to a sub-.500 finish because they were fatally flawed at SP and middle infield.
We can debate whether it was right to think this team could compete this year (and I have to assume that means compete for the division or a top WC spot), but it sounds like that was the expectation Bloom communicated to Henry. And we flopped pretty miserably at that.
Is this an intentional strawman, or do you really believe that saying Teel was an easy pick for the team to make is the same as saying that his presence in the system doesn't count?
Whenever I’m asked who was the greatest sports executive in history I always reply that it was the Chicago Bulls GM who took Michael Jordan. I mean he got him with the #3 pick! Genius! Good ol’… GM… whatshisname.
I agree with this. I had a feeling this was coming, not necessarily because I thought Bloom wasn't doing a good job, but more because I thought HIS bosses would let him take the fall. I think Cora is too popular in the clubhouse to let go right now, but if he were to go, I would look at this as a chance for winning the pennant in '25 or '26.
I mean, everyone knows this was Jerry Krause. You could have done the San Antonio GM who took Robinson, Duncan, Parker, Ginobili, although probably many NBA fans know that too.
Dombrowski was John Henry's great white whale going back to their Marlins days. If he's not available after being dismissed from Detroit, there's a whole alternate universe with Cherington staying on as the lead baseball ops guy in Boston.
There was never a point in time in the last few years this team had a cohesive plan or direction. Or maybe Bloom had one and it was either not apparent or not realized. Every year, every month, seemed like they were making it up as they went. Aside from disliking most of the moves he's made, beyond lowering the payroll, he's just not shown that he has an idea of how to get from a to b to c. There's various examples of this, whether it is the mystery of not trading people at the trade deadline (either to improve or get prospects), signing stop gaps and injured folks, continuously, or just going from not having an outfield one year, to not having a middle infield the next. How can any reasonable GM go into this year without a 2b or SS? Or into last year without a CF or LF?
I could handle the team being bad if they had a plan. But they weren't. They were mediocre with no plan beyond hoping prospects work at some point.
I'm pretty sure if Kluber (or other) had turned in a Wacha like performance, and we were currently in the WC scrum, Bloom would still have a job.
Frankly though, I don't see how the ownership entirely untangles the 2023 performance from coaching though. The pitching staff had some notable ineffective stretches this year. And while it's always easy to say, "So get better much pitching" the Ryan Brasier experience is telling.
I'm going to put my take here for posterity, not to argue and what not. I haven't read much of the thread, so I apologize in advance if I'm repeating things that have already been said.
I've generally defended Bloom. I think he's gotten way more hate than he deserves, and I think that firing him could very likely end up proving to be a mistake. I don't think Bloom is perfect either and wouldn't even call myself a "fan" of Bloom. Here's my rationale:
After the 2019 season, my view of the team was decidedly not sanguine. The 2019 club had a lot of talent, but the performance was decidedly mediocre. 84 wins and 9 games out of a wildcard was a depressing followup to 2018. The team had the highest payroll in MLB in 2019 and had pushed past the tax limit for two years running. The clock was about to run out on Betts with Bogaerts, Devers, and JDM looming in the following years. To make matters even worse, the Red Sox were generally considered to have one of if not the worst farm systems in baseball. And to make matters even worse than that, 3 divisional rivals were often ranked in the top 15, with the Rays near the top of the list and the Blue Jays still clocking in toward the middle of the pack despite graduating Vlad Jr., Bo Bichette, and Cavan Biggio.
I didn't see any chance for the Red Sox to compete over the next few years short of a miracle. There just wasn't any realistic way to get better over the short term -- a roster that already isn't good enough, a budget that is already stretched thin, and no help coming from the farm. Furthermore all of our rivals were poised to get better over the next few years due to their farm systems bearing fruit if nothing else.
I was anticipating a few years of doldrums at the very least. I know that some folks have bandied about the idea that the Red Sox were basically competitive from the 2000's through Bloom's hiring, but that just isn't true. Following the 2011 collapse, the Red Sox had terrible seasons in 2012 and 2014 and a bad season in 2015. 2013 came out of absolute nowhere and was surrounded by suck. Then the Sox were very good for 2016-2018 and mediocre in 2019.
It sure seemed like we were headed for a cyclical pattern of garbage seasons followed by excellence followed by more garbage. I thought we were headed for 2012-15 only without the fluke in the middle.
When Bloom was hired, his vision seemed to provide a possible out to that pattern -- pursue success in the mold of the Dodgers. I didn't think a short term fix was possible, but at the very least I hoped that Bloom's approach would provide us with another window toward the middle of the 2020's and then launch into a more perennial cycle of competitiveness as opposed to a boom/bust pattern.
2020 went basically as I expected. The 2021 season came as a complete surprise, much like 2013 only without quite getting all the way. The past two years have been middling, but far from dire performance of 2014 or even 2015. The division is tougher by a margin, and the Red Sox have played meaningful baseball fairly late into the season for both of the past two years. Some of that is due to the expansion of the playoffs, but even with said expansion the 2014-15 Sox would not have been going nearly as deep into the summer if my memory serves. Bloom has managed to do that largely by hitting big on small ticket free agents, much like the 2013 Sox. While not every Bloom acquisition has worked out and a couple have been really bad, I think overall the moves that he has made have been very good.
Meanwhile, the farm system has exceeded my expectations. Bloom's organization has developed more talent than expected out of the bottom-rung farm system that he inherited, and he has stocked the farm impressively with his own contributions.
I think where a lot of valid criticism of Bloom lies is in his non-moves. My impression is that Bloom may be a bit too much of a value hound, and that sometimes perfect gets in the way of the good. Quite a bit of the scuttlebutt following the firing has added weight to this idea, although it's hard to know if that's just the narrative that's being pushed or if there is a factual basis. Regardless, there are quite a few moments when it seemed like Bloom should do something and failed to do so. If indeed there were opportunities that Bloom failed to capitalize on because of maximizing or indecision, then he absolutely deserves criticism for that.
If ownership sees a path to improve upon Bloom's vision by hiring someone who live up to Bloom on the things that Bloom did well while improving upon the areas that he did poorly, then I can understand moving on. I'm definitely concerned though that we're going to see a change in direction that will tilt us back toward the cyclical pattern instead of perennial contention, and I think there's a nonzero risk that the next guy will end up ruining the next contention window on top of that. I hope that doesn't happen.
TL;DR:
I've generally defended Bloom. I think he's gotten way more hate than he deserves, and I think that firing him could very likely end up proving to be a mistake. I don't think Bloom is perfect either and wouldn't even call myself a "fan" of Bloom. Here's my rationale:
After the 2019 season, my view of the team was decidedly not sanguine. The 2019 club had a lot of talent, but the performance was decidedly mediocre. 84 wins and 9 games out of a wildcard was a depressing followup to 2018. The team had the highest payroll in MLB in 2019 and had pushed past the tax limit for two years running. The clock was about to run out on Betts with Bogaerts, Devers, and JDM looming in the following years. To make matters even worse, the Red Sox were generally considered to have one of if not the worst farm systems in baseball. And to make matters even worse than that, 3 divisional rivals were often ranked in the top 15, with the Rays near the top of the list and the Blue Jays still clocking in toward the middle of the pack despite graduating Vlad Jr., Bo Bichette, and Cavan Biggio.
I didn't see any chance for the Red Sox to compete over the next few years short of a miracle. There just wasn't any realistic way to get better over the short term -- a roster that already isn't good enough, a budget that is already stretched thin, and no help coming from the farm. Furthermore all of our rivals were poised to get better over the next few years due to their farm systems bearing fruit if nothing else.
I was anticipating a few years of doldrums at the very least. I know that some folks have bandied about the idea that the Red Sox were basically competitive from the 2000's through Bloom's hiring, but that just isn't true. Following the 2011 collapse, the Red Sox had terrible seasons in 2012 and 2014 and a bad season in 2015. 2013 came out of absolute nowhere and was surrounded by suck. Then the Sox were very good for 2016-2018 and mediocre in 2019.
It sure seemed like we were headed for a cyclical pattern of garbage seasons followed by excellence followed by more garbage. I thought we were headed for 2012-15 only without the fluke in the middle.
When Bloom was hired, his vision seemed to provide a possible out to that pattern -- pursue success in the mold of the Dodgers. I didn't think a short term fix was possible, but at the very least I hoped that Bloom's approach would provide us with another window toward the middle of the 2020's and then launch into a more perennial cycle of competitiveness as opposed to a boom/bust pattern.
2020 went basically as I expected. The 2021 season came as a complete surprise, much like 2013 only without quite getting all the way. The past two years have been middling, but far from dire performance of 2014 or even 2015. The division is tougher by a margin, and the Red Sox have played meaningful baseball fairly late into the season for both of the past two years. Some of that is due to the expansion of the playoffs, but even with said expansion the 2014-15 Sox would not have been going nearly as deep into the summer if my memory serves. Bloom has managed to do that largely by hitting big on small ticket free agents, much like the 2013 Sox. While not every Bloom acquisition has worked out and a couple have been really bad, I think overall the moves that he has made have been very good.
Meanwhile, the farm system has exceeded my expectations. Bloom's organization has developed more talent than expected out of the bottom-rung farm system that he inherited, and he has stocked the farm impressively with his own contributions.
I think where a lot of valid criticism of Bloom lies is in his non-moves. My impression is that Bloom may be a bit too much of a value hound, and that sometimes perfect gets in the way of the good. Quite a bit of the scuttlebutt following the firing has added weight to this idea, although it's hard to know if that's just the narrative that's being pushed or if there is a factual basis. Regardless, there are quite a few moments when it seemed like Bloom should do something and failed to do so. If indeed there were opportunities that Bloom failed to capitalize on because of maximizing or indecision, then he absolutely deserves criticism for that.
If ownership sees a path to improve upon Bloom's vision by hiring someone who live up to Bloom on the things that Bloom did well while improving upon the areas that he did poorly, then I can understand moving on. I'm definitely concerned though that we're going to see a change in direction that will tilt us back toward the cyclical pattern instead of perennial contention, and I think there's a nonzero risk that the next guy will end up ruining the next contention window on top of that. I hope that doesn't happen.
TL;DR:
- Before Bloom's hiring, I was expecting 2020-2023 to look like 2012-2015 but without the out-of-nowhere 2013 result
- Under Bloom, 2020 was just as expected, 2021 was way better than I expected, and 2022-23 were moderately better than I expected. Basically I was anticipating a couple of F's and a couple of D's, and we got an F, an A (maybe A- if you're a tough grader), and a pair of C+'s. It seems to me that there is a lot of hindsight criticism that he could have maybe gotten those C+'s to B's, and I can't disagree with that, but I also think that discounts the very real accomplishments of turning those F's and D's into C+'s to begin with (not to mention the lucky A).
- Bloom got more out of the farm he inherited than I expected and did a fantastic job of building onto it
- Bloom's lack of action at a few junctures could well have been significant unforced errors. We don't know for sure what opportunities were out there, but if he missed some because he was trying to maximize or was being indecisive, then I think that's a pretty big mark against him.
- There's definitely room for improvement, but there's also a ton of downside risk. I'm more afraid of the downside risk right now than the upside, given that the team should be on the ascendant anyway. Even if the org stays the course, there's no guarantee that Bloom's replacement will outperform him, and worse yet if they mortgage the farm too aggressively we could easily end up in a repeat of 2011/2019 much sooner and have to do it all over again.
Funny how they only say that this year when payroll is down some. And the "every so often" part is simply invented. I dont KNOW that they want to make a run at the playoffs every year, but there is almost nothing to support the contrary view that they dont.
It always mystifies me when the players suck, the fault lies with someone other than the players. And now we have a GM that, it seems, over-promised and under-delivered, so those other than the GM are getting the blame. If the deadline reporting is accurate, Bloom effectively said to his bosses, "this will help us get to the playoffs." It appears that he was spectacularly wrong. Why can't it be that simple?
This seems to dispel the notion that Bloom was executing a stealth rebuild exactly as ownership wanted (but couldn't publicly admit). Perhaps their hope was to rebuild the farm, and dip under the tax to create space to be more aggressive on the FA market. Bloom could have dipped under the tax last year, but hedged at the deadline. And then he could have subsequently been more aggressive on the FA front in this past off season. He did get Yoshida, but seemed to prioritize short term deals for older players. So, maybe the expectation from ownership was to have a winning team in by 2023, not 2024 or 2025.
I've been critical of Bloom, though recognize he did some things well. And though the team is .500 this year, they do have several seeds of promise, so I expected ownership to give him another year. Surprised.
I've been critical of Bloom, though recognize he did some things well. And though the team is .500 this year, they do have several seeds of promise, so I expected ownership to give him another year. Surprised.
I thought he was a bad hire. Did I know? No. But every year he reaffirmed it.
I didn't care for the Dombrowski hire either, but Dombrowski had a track record of turning teams into contenders.
My pessimism with Bloom is entirely related to the thought that he came here to lower payroll, and having that go from a short term plan to just ~the plan~. I do not think teams like the Red Sox Yankees and Dodgers should be ran like the Rays (and Friedman isn't running them like the Rays anyway). I think what works in a place that has 10,000 people show up that can handle a season or three with 70 win teams is not the same as something that can work in big markets. I also don't think having a farm system and not making dumb massive contracts are not mutually exclusive, and it doesn't take some Yale pedigree to realize you shouldn't be giving massive contracts to chronically injured or end of their prime guys is a mistake. The Sox from 03-09 or so were able to work this well.
Guys that have been signed constantly like Kluber, Garret Richards, Martin Perez, etc, should have been the exception rather than the norm.
Especially 2012-2013
Could have had some twilight Papi magic in 2016 if he could have done something then
No one’s pining for Ben back other than maybe having Wendy Nix back in the media market
Red Sox should focus on where they’ve done well recently utilizing big market advantage, the young FA’s route where they’ve gotten Xander and Devers, among others
Could Have used some back end pitching depth
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