Chaim Bloom was hired by the Boston Red Sox to be their next Chief Baseball Officer back on October 28, 2019, and on Thursday, the team ran out of patience after four seasons. It’s easy to take a look at some of the big swings (and some misses) that he took in his four seasons with the club and come to the conclusion that he wasn’t the right fit, but a broader look at where the Sox are now compared to where they were when he started shows they are headed in the right direction.
Boston is a team that fired Dave Dombrowski just ten months after they had won the World Series, making way for Bloom. Dombrowski held the position for four years, and before him, Ben Cherington was at the helm from 2011-2015. Are you sensing a pattern?
The Sox went 267-262 in Bloom’s tenure with the club. They’re in jeopardy of finishing last in the AL East for the third time in four seasons, which obviously isn’t going to sit well for big market clubs like the Red Sox.
On the other hand, they have the most World Series titles in this millennium with four, and the San Francisco Giants are their only competition with three. They’re lapping the hated Yankees and everyone else, but apparently, that’s not good enough. If there were a time to start building up a little bit, this would be it. That was also what it appeared Bloom was doing.
When he took over, the Red Sox had the 25th-ranked farm system in the majors, according to MLB Pipeline. That’s what happens after Dombrowski runs a team for a few seasons. Yet, now that system is ranked fifth in the league according to Baseball America and should be able to supply the big league club regularly with talented prospects. That’s how you start building a sustainable winner and how you can do it for a little less money, which seemed important to Sox ownership when Bloom took over.
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All Betts are off (to Los Angeles)
Mookie Betts was amazing in 2018, winning the AL MVP and leading the Red Sox to their most recent championship. He was still really good in 2019, finishing eighth in MVP voting and earning Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards, but the Red Sox finished the season at 84-78, 19 games back of the 103-win Yankees. With the Red Sox having exceeded the competitive balance tax in 2018 and 2019 with payrolls of $230 million and $228 million and the thresholds for those seasons being at $197 million and $206 million, they needed to get under the CBT in order to reset the penalties.
Mookie Betts had one last year of team control remaining, and after he turned down a $300 million offer (that may have never been offered), they traded him to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He ended up signing with L.A. for 12 years and $365 million. He was still just going into his age-27 campaign in 2020, and this season he is in the running for another MVP award. He’s the type of player you build around, no matter the cost. Hard to believe that the need to trade Betts was Bloom’s idea.
The return package was pretty decent for a one-year rental, but with Betts having signed on long-term, the deal looks like an utter fleecing by the Dodgers. They ended up with Alex Verdugo, L.A.’s top prospect in a deep farm system, number eight prospect Jeter Downs, and number 14 prospect Connor Wong.
After a solid first season with Boston in 2020, Verdugo has settled in as a slightly better than league average bat that’s been remarkably consistent. Pick a stat. He’s been right in the same range each of the past three seasons. He’s become a nice complimentary piece, but not necessarily someone that you’d build a lineup around.
Jeter Downs was placed on waivers last offseason, making it into 14 games with Boston in 2022. He is now a member of the Washington Nationals farm system. Connor Wong is still with the Red Sox, and he has an arm on him behind the dish, but his bat is still a work in progress.
In Bloom’s tenure, this is the original sin. Is it his fault that the previous regime had run up payroll in chasing down a World Series? Not at all. He had to fix that mess, and that meant saying goodbye to Mookie Betts. The team likely would have been a whole lot better if he’d still been around the last four seasons.
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A Story as old as time
Boy signs big free agent. Big free agent underperforms. Big free agent misses time due to injury. Boy gets blamed. It’s a story as old as time.
Whether Bloom should have taken such a big swing on Trevor Story with a six-year, $140 million contract is up for debate, but this was likely his way of having an insurance plan at shortstop if pending free agent Xander Bogaerts didn’t re-sign. For the number of years and the total value of the contract, it’s not a bad deal given Story’s track record to that point.
However, through two seasons, Story has managed to play in 124 total games, is batting .226 with a 285 on-base percentage (OBP), and his OPS+ is 12% lower than league average. Defensively he has been solid, so the hope now is that once he is fully recovered from elbow surgery, the bat will also improve.
This one has the potential to go down as a major miss for Bloom and a self-inflicted one at that. With Story down for the first 112 games of the season, Enrique Hernández took over at shortstop and ranked as the second-worst player at the position per Statcast. Not having a backup solution for such an important position was also a misfire. Yu Chang has been solid defensively, but his bat just hasn’t been up to par. His OBP sits at the Mendoza Line.
The Red Sox announced Story’s surgery in January, and veteran Elvis Andrus was still on the market. He stayed on the market until February 20th. While he’s not the same player that he once was, he’s performed better than the options the Sox went with, and he signed with the White Sox for just $3 million.
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Dads take Xander out for ice cream, give him monster contract
With Story already signed, the Red Sox could offer Xander Bogaerts a contract that they felt comfortable with. If he accepted, great! They could pair Story and Bogaerts together in the middle infield and be set. If he rejected, no big deal. They’d still have a solid left side of the infield with Story and Rafael Devers.
This line of reasoning is illustrated by the fact that the Sox offer of six years, roughly $160 million was well below the 11 years, $280 million he ended up signing for with the San Diego Padres. The average annual value would have been higher with the Red Sox offer by about a million per season, and that was the contract they felt comfortable with.
Bogaerts is having his worst season since 2017, but he has still been a well above average bat with a 114 OPS+ (100 is league average). Already in his age-30 season, the numbers may rebound for a little while, but the back half of that contract could be rough, and that is what the Sox were hoping to avoid with their offer.
It may not be farfetched to think that Bloom could end up being correct about not going to such great lengths to sign Bogaerts, but the Betts trade and the Story injury really worked against him on this one. The Betts trade made this a case of “here we go again” when Xander signed in San Diego. Story being unavailable for most of the season and the lack of a backup option at shortstop made it tough to potentially count this as a win for Bloom.
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Rafael Devers gets inked
On January 10th, Story underwent right elbow surgery. The next day the Red Sox signed the 26-year-old third baseman to a ten-year, $313.5 million deal. This deal hasn’t even gone into effect yet, and the man responsible for it, Bloom, is gone. This will be his parting gift. His lasting legacy in Boston. It could also be Bloom attempting to atone for not signing Betts in the first place.
The Red Sox got their star player. Bloom got the axe.
Obviously, Devers has been an incredible third baseman for Boston in his seven years in the league. He’s the kind of player you build around. Now, it’ll be up to the next person in charge to build a team around Devers and chase rings. They had better be quick though, because they’ll just have four years before it’s on to the next one.
It feels like Bloom was sent in to slash payroll, which he did, and build up the farm system, which he did. Ownership also wanted the team to win immediately while not opening up the coffers to fund those acquisitions. Bloom implemented systems that will be in place for years to come, and with Devers in the middle of the roster, the likelihood that Boston is perennially in the mix for the playoffs is high.
The one downside for the team moving forward is that the Baltimore Orioles have arrived after stockpiling prospects for years. The Tampa Bay Rays are a powerhouse. The Toronto Blue Jays are spending around their young core. And then there’s the Yankees, who won’t be content to take a few years off.
It’s not going to be easy for the Red Sox to reach the promised land again, especially needing to secure a playoff spot in the AL East, but the groundwork that Bloom laid should provide a solid foundation from which to build.
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