Bloom was named Chief Baseball Officer on October 28, 2019. He has worked in baseball for 19 years, starting as an intern for the Tampa Bay Rays, where he spent 15 years of his career preceding his time with the Red Sox.
In addition to this change, General Manager Brian O’Halloran has been offered a new senior leadership position within the baseball operations department.
The search for new baseball operations leadership will begin immediately. In the interim, the day-to-day operations will continue under the direction of O’Halloran, and Assistant General Managers Eddie Romero, Raquel Ferreira, and Michael Groopman.
At the time, Betts was entering the final year of his contract, and he was due to become a very, very rich man. The Red Sox determined that they could not sign him, so they traded him to the Dodgers, getting Alex Verdugo, Connor Wong and Jeter Downs in return.
One report from Lou Merloni said that the Red Sox had offered Betts a 10-year, $300 million contract. Speaking with The Boston Globe’s Pete Abraham this week in Cleveland, Betts said that offer was never put forth by the Red Sox.
“That never happened,” Betts said of the reported $300 million offer. “I know that’s out there and people say what they’ve got to say. But no, they didn’t do that. They didn’t.”
While Betts has clearly moved on to greener pastures in Los Angeles, he still insists he would have loved to remain in Boston for his entire career.
“Most people don’t believe it, but why would I lie about that? I did. That was my team,” Betts told Abraham. “Just because I didn’t take an offer didn’t mean I didn’t want to be there. There’s a business component to the game. We were looking for houses in Boston. We thought it was going to work out. I thought both sides were playing the slow game and it would eventually work out. We were negotiating, that’s what I thought.”
MLB.COM: Is the club leaning toward buying or selling at the Deadline?
BLOOM: I think we’re going to need more time before the Deadline to see exactly what makes sense for us to do. We understand the reality of the division. It’s probably the best division in the history of baseball, but it’s where we play. We’re hoping to put the pieces together a little bit better than we did in the first half, have a lot of those individual bright spots add up to more team wins and put ourselves in a position to make the postseason. Obviously, we’ll need to see how we play between now and then and we can figure out where to go from there.
MLB.COM: So at the moment, there’s no, ‘We’re buying,’ or ‘We’re selling?’
BLOOM: I think realistically we try to stay in touch with all 29 clubs at all times and see what people are thinking. We know that the bulk of the action on the trade front is going to happen after the Draft. That’s not to say we aren’t having some conversations. We are, because you always want to understand what all of your competitors are trying to do, and get a sense of the different possibilities available to us. What the demand is for some of our players, but as far as that taking specific shape … Look, there’s always moves that could happen early, but the bulk of the action usually happens a lot closer to the end of July.
MLB.COM: Is there any one area you feel the focus needs to go to in the second half?
BLOOM: If there’s one area where we need to be more consistent it’s defensively.
Boston Red Sox outfielder Alex Verdugo was benched during Wednesday’s game after failing to hustle, according to Julian McWilliams of the Boston Globe. In turn, Verdugo will not start Thursday’s series finale versus the Cleveland Guardians.
The tipping point occurred during the seventh inning of Wednesday’s game. Verdugo was on first base and the Red Sox were trailing by a 5-2 score when Masataka Yoshida hit a two-out chopper to the right side. The play pulled first baseman Josh Naylor far away from the bag, and at such an angle that it would’ve been difficult for him to toss the ball to the pitcher covering first base in time to record the out.
Alas, Naylor was able to snuff out whatever rally could’ve transpired because Verdugo let off the pedal on his way into second base. Naylor delivered the ball to shortstop Amed Rosario, who made a stretching grab to corral the ball for the third out.
BOSTON—The Red Sox placed left-hander Chris Sale on the injured list with shoulder inflammation on Friday, another setback for the seven-time All-Star as he attempts to re-establish himself as a reliable member of the rotation.
“It’s just kind of a gut punch,” Sale told reporters before Friday night’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays. “I hate feeling like this. I started having fun playing baseball again. And now, back to not having fun. That sucks.”
Late last November, according to an industry source, chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom went to sleep believing the Red Sox had an agreement in principle with Abreu, with only some minor contractual matters to be completed. But when Bloom awoke, he was greeted with the news that Abreu had spurned the Sox and signed a three-year, $58.5 million deal with the Astros. Bloom was informed that the Red Sox would not have the option of revising his offer and the deal was done.
At the time, it seemed like a poor start to the offseason. Now, it seems like the Red Sox got lucky. Abreu has been horrendous with the Astros, with a slash line of .222/.280/259. Incredibly, he did not have a single homer in his first 45 games.
Eventually, the Sox pivoted and signed Justin Turner as their DH - at far less money and a shorter commitment. Turner is slashing .263/.361/.400 with five homers and 18 RBI.
“We were waiting for Tanner (Houck) to see how he felt after his start,” Cora said. “We’re going to make a change, actually Tanner is going to start on Sunday and Corey is going to go to the bullpen starting on Friday.
“We had that conversation with Corey, very professional, he understands. He signed here to be a starter, but right now he’s struggling and obviously the kids are throwing the ball well, there are a lot of off days coming up. So, we decided to make a change. We were just waiting for Tanner to see how he felt after his start.”
Kluber’s run with Boston has been a mess so far. He’s been hit hard by teams, resulting in a 2-6 record with a 6.26 ERA. The 37-year-old hasn’t pitched in relief during the regular season since 2013, but he did appear out of the bullpen once last postseason with Tampa.
Did the Red Sox acquire a starting catcher in the Mookie Betts trade?
The Red Sox received Wong, Alex Verdugo and Jeter Downs from the Dodgers for Betts and David Price on Feb. 10, 2020. At the time, Wong was considered more likely to become a No. 2 catcher on a big league team. But there also was a time when many didn’t think Christian Vázquez would hit enough to be Boston’s No. 1 catcher. That obviously changed.
The trade return will look significantly better if Wong ends up being a starting catcher. Verdugo leads all Red Sox players in WAR (1.4), per Fangraphs.com. Wong is fifth (0.7 WAR), just behind Rafael Devers (0.9).
He entered Thursday tied for second in the major leagues in pop time to second base (1.88 seconds).
Left-hander Chris Sale has signed a five-year contract extension with the Boston Red Sox, team president Dave Dombrowski announced Saturday.
The five-year deal is worth $145 million, league sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan, and includes an opt-out after three years, a vesting sixth-year option based on stats worth at least $20 million and a no-trade clause beginning in the middle of the 2020 season.
The deal adds to Sale’s current contract (one year remaining) and will go through the 2024 season, with Sale making $30 million annually in the first three seasons and $27.5 million annually in the final two, league sources told Passan.
“it’s as if Jeter stands alone as the shortstop talent for a generation.
It’s too bad, considering that Garciaparra was every bit the player Jeter was. And in his prime, he was better.
There’s no question that Jeter brings the superior career to a debate between the two. Injuries derailed what Garciaparra could become from a legacy standpoint, and cost him the Hall of Fame”
Shortstops with most seasons of 6+ WAR, debuting 1969+:
Name Yrs From To Age Cal Ripken 6 1983 1991 22-30 Alan Trammell 6 1983 1990 25-32 Alex Rodriguez 6 1996 2003 20-27 Nomar Garciaparra 6 1997 2003 23-29 Ozzie Smith 4 1985 1989 30-34 Troy Tulowitzki 4 2007 2011 22-26 Robin Yount 3 1980 1983 24-27 Barry Larkin 3 1988 1996 24-32 Derek Jeter 3 1998 2009 24-35
The Rockies have agreed in principle on a deal to acquire Boston infielder Marco Scutaro for pitcher Clayton Mortensen, according to a source with direct knowledge of the talks.
The Rockies’ earmarked Scutaro as a target when the offseason began, seeing him as a starting second baseman and potential No. 2 hitter in the lineup. The deal went on life support Friday, but was revived today when the Rockies were able to work through some financial issues to take on Scutaro’s $6 million contract.
It will become official shortly as the players involved are notified.
...Mortensen is an extreme groundball pitcher, relying heavily on a sinker. He went 2-4 with a 3.86 ERA, splitting between between the bullpen and rotation.
With Scutaro in the fold, the Rockies will enter spring training with one of their deepest lineups in franchise history. He will join outfielder Michael Cuddyer and catcher Ramon Hernandez as key acquisitions, completely reshaping the lineup around Carlos Gonzalez and all-star cleanup hitter Troy Tulowitzki.
If you heard a loud thumping noise a few minutes ago, that wasn’t your imagination. It was me bashing my head against the desk as I was reading Dan Shaughnessy’s latest opus. Like all Shaughnessy articles, he channels his most emotional nerves to convince us that the Red Sox ownership (or whomever his target du jour might be) is wronging us. That their “cheap” ways are depriving us of a championship that we’re entitled to experiencing. Clearly, he does it for attention and notoriety, and perhaps we should all be immune to his shtick by now. For some reason, I can’t let go.
...Terry Francona, Theo Epstein, Jonathan Papelbon, and Heidi Watney are all gone, and we just learned that Carl Crawford had surgery on his wrist, which isn’t going to make things easier for his big bounce-back season.
I can live with all of the above – even if we won’t have J.D. Drew to kick around anymore – but I can’t stand talk about payroll limits and luxury tax obligations.
While Heidi Watney’s presence will be missed, I’m not sure how this will impact the team’s on field performance. If anything, I think the horny old baseball writers, like Shaughnessy, will be the ones missing her most of all.
Crawford’s wrist injury probably won’t make his bounce back season any easier, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be successful. The good news is that only the cartilege was torn in the wrist. Had he broken a bone, the outlook on his season would’ve been much less rosy. Recovery from such a procedure typically lasts 6-8 weeks, which would put him about 2-4 weeks behind in terms of Spring Training readiness. He seems to be a pretty quick healer, so he could be back even sooner. I don’t see any reason to panic until we’re given an actually reason to do so.
Thus narrowly avoiding the scheduled sessions in the Tub O’ Leeches for players wishing to treat an inflamed saltalamacchia by purging of harmful humors…
“There were areas of our players’ physical maintenance and care that we thought could improve from 2011,’’ general manager Ben Cherington said yesterday.
Some of the changes were made quickly, including the removal of Dr. Thomas Gill as medical director. Cherington also looked deeper in an effort to create what he termed “the best possible environment’’ for players.
The Red Sox created two new positions, hiring Mike Boyle as their strength and conditioning consultant and Dan Dyrek as a clinical consultant.
[...]
[Boyle] will be with the team at spring training and at home games while providing “mentorship’’ to new strength coach Pat Sandora and members of the minor league conditioning staff.
Rick Jameyson, who was with the Indians for 20 seasons, was hired as the head athletic trainer. Brad Pearson was promoted from the minor league staff to be his assistant.
Last season, Orlando Cabrera batted .238 with the Indians and Giants, posting a 61 OPS+. The season before that, he posted a 76 OPS+. The season before that, he posted an 85 OPS+. Orlando Cabrera has been declining, and just turned 37 years old. As a free agent, Cabrera didn’t drum up much interest, which I’m guessing is why he’s intending to hang ‘em up. Enrique Rojas:
“Orlando Cabrera to retire from baseball, he said in Colombia radio station. Thanks for memories!”
Cabrera had a long career that’ll be difficult to forget. He debuted with the Expos in 1997, and remained there until the giant Nomar Garciaparra three-way trade in 2004. That year, with the Red Sox, Cabrera won a World Series. He wound up with the Angels, earning the unfortunate nickname “The Wizard of O.C.”, and then he wound up with the White Sox, and the A’s, and the Twins, and the Reds, and the Indians, and the Giants ... He remained a shortstop to the end, and collected 2,055 hits. He will always be remembered as a pest. An absolute pest.
Brian Evans should have made the Basketball Hall of Fame before Jim Rice made the…huh? wha??
Boston Red Sox legend Jim Rice, a member of The Baseball Hall of Fame, has just completed a new TV commercial which will promote the new single “At Fenway,” now on sale at Best Buy and Amazon.com.
The song, written and recorded by crooner Brian Evans, was produced by multiple Grammy Award winning producer Narada Michael Walden…
After debuting at #3 on Amazon.com, astonishing given the single was released in November, during football season, the commercial was filmed last Monday at The Groveland Diner in Groveland, Massachusetts.
...“Red Sox Nation is everywhere. This has truly been a D2F (Direct to Fan) campaign at this point, and we’re blown away at the response to the song,” says Evans.
“This is not a vanity project” The Chakram Bullshiit Launcher is fully loaded, sir!
Schilling is, and has been for the past 31 years, a gamer. He honed his controller skills on an Intellivision video game system. His first favorite game was - surprise - “Major League Baseball.”
“I was at the right age for consoles, when ‘Pong’ was the ‘Need For Speed’ of the day,” Schilling said. “(‘Major League Baseball’) was like the greatest baseball game ever. If you had a consistent playing partner like they do in ‘Starcraft’ now, every game was 1-0, and you had to hit a home run down the left field line.”
...Schilling is now the chairman and founder of 38 Studios, a video game company that is getting set to release its first title, “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning,” on February 7.
“Gaming, outside of the Lord, baseball and my family, was always my thing,” he said. “I took this very much as I did my baseball career. I scouted the industry for about five or six years, and I took notes and I went to a lot of lunches and a lot of meetings with people that were in the industry and just get a feel for what I was up against.”
...“I’m a very routine-oriented guy. Deep down inside the game dev process, there is that routine, but the wins and losses are much farther between. And they are different. When you win a game against the Yankees on Monday and it’s on ESPN and all over in the newspapers, there is immediate instant feedback. This is very different. You have to find wins and losses in different ways.”
“I don’t miss anything I did for a living. I was born to do it for a long, long time. The things I got to see and be a part of, I’ll be forever grateful, but I’m looking for the new schedule, the new playing field, the new World Series. That’s been the challenge is to find where and when and how those things happen here.”
Red Sox left fielder Carl Crawford had surgery on his left wrist in Arizona today. GM Ben Cherington said Crawford should be recovered to play “the bulk” of the season…Crawford felt soreness when he started his offseason hitting workouts around Jan. 1. He had an MRI that showed cartilage damage and arthroscopic surgery was recommended.
...Cherington did not rule Crawford being eligible for Opening Day. But it sounds like he could miss the early part of the season…we’re optimistic Carl will be progressing in baseball activities as we get into spring training and be in a position to be active and our left fielder in our lineup for the bulk of the regular season.
The Boston Red Sox have signed left handed pitcher Franklin Morales to a 1-year, $850 thousand deal according to Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe. The deal allows both sides to avoid arbitration.
Morales, a 25 year old Venezuelan reliever, has a career ERA of 4.61 but was able to post a 3.69 ERA throughout 2011, part of which was spent with the Colorado Rockies. He spent four seasons with the Rockies but was traded to the Red Sox in May of 2011.
Bartolo Colon has agreed to a deal with an unknown club reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today (on Twitter). The right-hander wouldn’t divulge the team because he has not yet passed his physical.
Pretty sure it’s either the All-Stars or the Champs.
Don’t count Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine among those impressed by the Yankees’ late-night moves on Friday.
At a Jimmy Fund charity event on Saturday morning, Valentine didn’t seem too concerned about New York’s additions of starting pitchers Michael Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda.
“They’re probably an upgrade from [Bartolo] Colon and [Freddy] Garcia,” Valentine said. “Probably. I don’t know. It seems it.”
He did talk about the potential flaws for each pitcher.
“Pineda, when I saw him the first half, he looked unhittable. Second half, he looked OK,” said Valentine. “[The Mariners] saw a lot of him and they traded him.
“Kuroda is a good pitcher—a year older than he was last year, pitching in the American League and not the National League, pitching in not a great pitcher’s ballpark from a great pitcher’s ballpark.”
the new labor deal has created millions of dollars in incentives to get under the threshold when it rises to $189 million in 2014.
What are those incentives? From the Yankees’ point of view, they come in three forms:
1) The top luxury-tax rate for four-time repeat offenders (in other words, THE YANKEES) will rise to 50 percent from 40 percent beginning next year. (That rate phases in at 42.5 percent for 2012.)
2) For the first time, under this labor deal, a team that drives its payroll below the threshold, even for one year, can hit the reset button. So if it then goes back over that threshold in a future season, it’s treated as a first-time offender and taxed at only 17.5 percent…
[3)] a new rule preventing teams in the 15 biggest markets from receiving ANY revenue-sharing handouts. So if any of those teams generate so few dollars that they ordinarily would have gotten revenue sharing, that money instead will get rebated to the teams that pay into the pool. At the moment, this rule, which also will be phased in, would affect only the Nationals, Braves, Blue Jays and Astros. But who knows what the impact will be down the road?...
the Yankees have been telling people in the game that if they play their contract cards correctly, avoid big, dumb long-term contracts for the sake of giving out big, dumb long-term contracts, and structure future deals right, it could be worth up to $40 million a year… The Yankees have no hope of getting below the current threshold ($178 million) this season or next. But by 2014, when the goal is to nudge below $189 million, they conveniently have more than $50 million in guaranteed money disappearing off their books…
But is this abrupt attack of frugality really inspired primarily by the labor deal? There are skeptics around baseball who aren’t so sure.
For one thing, they say, The Boss, the all-powerful George M. Steinbrenner III, is no longer ruling their universe… For another thing, the cynics claim…the Yankees started working to reduce their payroll—and their luxury-tax bill—even before this labor agreement came around…
maybe the labor deal fine print explains what’s going on in this market. And maybe it doesn’t. Either way, if we’re charging toward a world in which NOBODY is going to pay a luxury tax in a $7 billion industry, recognize what that means for this sport.
If this where we’re heading, we’re looking at a revolutionary shift in the landscape of baseball… When the Yankees and Red Sox—of all people—turn thrifty, the entire sport feels the ripple effects.
While he was already a very good hitter, Cano has developed into one of the most feared hitters in baseball over the past two seasons, finishing in the top six of MVP voting both times. His triple slash line of .311/.365/.533 from 2010-11 is a beauty for a second baseman, not to mention the 28 homers, 46 doubles, 118 RBI and 104 runs he posted last season. It was good enough for Cano to bring home the Silver Slugger for the second consecutive season.
A model of durability as well, Cano hasn’t played in less than 159 games in any of the past five seasons. Pedroia only managed 75 games in an injury-plagued 2010 season, so that’s a point for Cano.
The case for Pedroia
On the other hand, Pedroia played in 157, 154 and 159 games, respectively, in three of the past four seasons, so it’s not like he’s injury prone. Pedroia, the 2007 Rookie of the Year, also won the 2008 MVP. And Pedroia can do it all. He hit 21 home runs last season while stealing 26 bases and also winning a Gold Glove (his second). His .307/.387/.474 line is competitive with Cano’s, too. Where Pedroia has a bit less home-run power, he makes up for it by getting on base. He holds a .373 to .347 advantage in career OBP.
...Our call
I’m going to go with Pedroia here in a photo finish, the closest of calls, based upon the defensive separation. The two are very close across the board. Just as with yesterday’s pick, I could go either way and there definitely isn’t a wrong answer. In fact, we have over 20 of these posts lined up, and this may well be the hardest choice among them.
Still, the fact that Tigers ace Justin Verlander was named the AL MVP re-opened an apparent wound for Martinez about his distress in being snubbed in the 1999 MVP voting, a year when Martinez went 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and 313 strikeouts but was left off the ballots of two writers (George King of the New York Post and LaVelle Neal III of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune), resulting in Martinez finishing second to Ivan Rodriguez in the race. Martinez also rankled at the memory of finishing second to Barry Zito in the 2002 AL Cy Young race.
“I was kind of pissed off at first [when Verlander won the MVP], but then I went to realize that they are the [voters] are going to have to live with that label on their back. If anyone calls them prejudice or racist for not voting for me, everyone will have to understand that it’s their responsibility for not voting for me at that time,” said Martinez.
...“I was ripped apart,” added Martinez. “I’m not afraid to say that the way that George King and Mr. LaVelle Neal III went about it was unprofessional.”
On pitching during the Steroid Era:
At the time, all I wanted was to compete. To me, it was normal. There were so many players doing it that it was normal. … You could see the guys being beefed up from one year to the next. I told so many guys, I remember Brady Anderson going from 40 homers to nearly seven the next year. I saw Luis Gonzalez go from 57 to, what, 17 the next year? It was weird. It was weird.
Everybody just admired what I was doing. Everyone was so caught up in my success. But I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do. All I wanted to do was to compete, to help the Red Sox win. It didn’t matter to me what I did individually. If I left Boston without that ring, without that championship, I’d feel like a bitter man right now. It didn’t matter to me that I was called a prima donna when I would miss two or three starts. I never did a steroid to [recuperate] in the time those guys would recup. I know how much a quad would probably hurt someone or a hamstring, how long it would take. I saw guys like [Clemens] sometimes get a hamstring or a quad or something, and in two days, he was right back and throwing 97.
I don’t know what went on. I certainly know that he recuped a lot quicker than I would, and I was younger. I pitched less, a lot less, than Roger did. He wasn’t young. He was a Hall of Famer before he got into that.
Theo Epstein, the former Red Sox general manager, will return home this weekend to help host the semi-annual “Hot Stove Cool Music” charity concert that launched 12 years ago.
Legendary baseball journalist Peter Gammons and a slew of musical performers will join Epstein, a Brookline native, at the Paradise Rock Club in Allston for Saturday night’s fundraiser – three months after he resigned as general manager of the Red Sox to lead baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs.
...Boston-native actor Mike O’Malley, who plays a regular role on the TV series “Glee” will emcee the gathering that includes scheduled performers: Grammy award-nominated, Boston-native Susan Tedeschi, Boston rockers The Remains, Grammy award-winning guitarist Derek Trucks, indie folk band Deer Tick, indie rockers Mean Creek, garage punk band The Sprained Ankles and the “Hot Stove All-Stars” featuring Gammons, Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janovitz, indie rocker Kay Hanley, J. Geils Band’s Seth Justman, folk rocker Robin Lane, Grammy nominated singer/songwriter Tanya Donelly and more, organizers said.
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