Red Sox racked with dysfunction under Craig Breslow, according to insider report
A new expose on Boston’s season reveals a disturbing level of innter turmoil under their chief baseball officer.
Dec 9, 2024; Dallas, TX, USA; Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow speaks with the media
at the Hilton Anatole during the 2024 MLB Winter Meetings.
Craig Breslow just might not have been ready to lead a front office for a major professional sports organization. Who knew?!
Breslow and his staff are under fire amid a 40-41 season, the Rafael Devers salary-dump, and new insider reporting that paints an ugly picture. ESPN's Jeff Passan detailed a Red Sox front office that's been fraught with dysfunction, especially after Breslow hired an outside consulting firm called Sportsology Group (perfect) to conduct a company audit, a la "The Bobs" in Office Space.
After Breslow's Bobs asked everyone "What would you say you do here?", around 50 people lost their jobs, Passan reported. The implication is that many of them were holdovers from the previous three GMs (Ben Cherington, Dave Dombrowski, Chaim Bloom), and so this was intended to streamline things - a nice way of saying, a coup by Breslow. And a lot of that takeover resulted in the elimination of scouts - a.k.a. baseball people:
The professional scouting department was gutted. Some of the positions wound up being filled, but it was clear to those who stayed and went: This was Breslow's team, and now he would remake it in his image. ... Since the cuts, Breslow's circle of trust has been small and his reliance on the team's analytical model heavy, according to sources, leaving some longtime employees embittered. Breslow loyalists fear the consequences of that, with one saying: "There are definitely turncoats internally plotting against Bres."
And we wonder why the Red Sox seem like they don't actually know how to play baseball.
Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn ImagesRed Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow
In retrospect, it's clear that ownership faltered big-time in letting a first-time GM execute such a swift internal revolution. Breslow barely knows what it's like to lead a front office, but he's allowed the latitude to oust dozens of staffers and insulate himself with his friends and some computers?
Considering all this, it's no surprise that Breslow and his team have had trouble with their people skills around players and coaches. The passage that may have summed up Passan's piece described the aftermath of moving Devers to DH: "The front office's tack reinforced the feeling in the clubhouse that the organization's reliance on analytics for decision-making had come at the expense of productive interpersonal communication."
That's not going to change, unless Breslow takes the initiative. And until the Red Sox overcome their interpersonal dysfunction and unhealthy obsession with computers, it's likely to hold them back.
