Red Sox GM Chaim Bloom Was Reportedly Left Speechless And Lost At The Airport Last Night Just Moments After Xander Bogaerts Signed With The Padres
SOURCE - He rubbed the corner of his lips as he peered out toward nothingness. He looked shell-shocked at times. Bloom’s voice trembled.
The Red Sox’ plan to achieve long-term sustainability has taken its lumps under Bloom, with the club finishing last in the American League East in two of the last three seasons. The Sox have now seen two cornerstone franchise players exit over the last four offseasons.
What the fuck? How can Bloom be stunned? The Padres offered Bogaerts $120 MILLION MORE DOLLARS! What did he think was going to happen? You would have thought he just saw someone get shot based on this description of Bloom left unable to process a reaction. It's one thing not to value a certain player as much as another team. It's entirely different when you are left stunned that someone took over a hundred million dollars to go somewhere else.
The Red Sox were seen as an organization flailing around BEFORE Bogaerts left. Now that we know he was lowballed with a shit offer this week and with many of the top free agents having already been signed, the Boston Red Sox are at a real crossroads.
It sounds like the plan is going to be to have Trevor Story move over to shortstop and play Enrique Hernandez at second. Carlos Correa and Dansby Swanson are both still out there in the free agent market. This reminds me of late last spring when the only options were Correa and the much weaker Story. Now, it's Correa again and the much weaker player is Swanson. Signing either player would make the team better but even a great player like Correa isn't enough on his own. Also, if Xander was too expensive to re-sign, Correa will get at least $50 million more I imagine.
Tony Gutierrez. Shutterstock Images.The other pivot they could make is signing Carlos Rodon and a bevy of starting pitchers to improve another area in complete disarray. But you'd have to sign the best starting pitchers remaining to be a serious contender next year. Here's how something like that could look:
Chris Sale (already on team)
Carlos Rodon
Kodai Senga
Chris Bassitt
Nick Pivetta (already on team)
Signing just those three guys will cost you around $75 million each year and they come with some big question marks. Rodon is very good but seems to struggle to finish the past two seasons. Senga was awesome last year in Japan, but will he be successful in the US? Bassitt will be 34 when the deal he signs begins and he wants a four year pact. While that's a very good rotation, it's still not the best in baseball and you just spent well north of $100 million to get there.
So even in absolute best-case scenarios where they get every good starting pitcher out there AND they sign Carlos Correa, I still don't know if I'd say they are the best team in the AL. And let's be clear, they aren't signing all of those guys. I have a better chance of being on the cover of Men's Health. This group of free agents are far too expensive and players don't seem to want to play in Boston. I talk about that development here:
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The right play is to blow it up. Red Sox fans haven't lived through anything close to a rebuild since 1992-94 and even that rebuild was a half measure. And as Mike Ehrmantraut tells us:
I said the Angels should have done this at the trading deadline but the Red Sox should strip everything down to the dry wall. Trade anyone with value. Whatever money you are saving from paying these premium players, sock away for when you are going to be good again so you have a huge war chest to work from. I'd even trade Rafael Devers. It doesn't do anyone any good having him put together a great year for a team that goes 75-87.
But the Red Sox won't do that. You have an owner in John Henry who thinks he understands the Red Sox fans but is clueless and cowardly. He hasn't had a press conference where he has taken questions in ages. You also have a GM in Chaim Bloom that might just be completely inept. He offered Xander Bogaerts $90 million dollars in Spring Training. Then there is that garbage $180 million dollar offer this week. He wound up getting $280 million dollars. That's a sign that Bloom has no pulse on the market at all. If you don't want to sign him, you have to trade him. To keep him on a last place team all season shows me that Bloom is asleep at the wheel.
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This is truly a stunning development for a team and ownership that did a masterful job with player personnel for almost the entire century. They knew when to move off great players like Pedro Martinez and Manny Ramirez. They were able to keep David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia until they both retired. You can point to the Pedroia contract as not a great value but that's the joy of being a large market team. You can invest in certain iconic players because you have the financial wiggle room. Now they overpay for middle relievers and make $100 million gambles on players who have never had a major league at bat.
I always thought the worst place you can be in professional sports is in the middle. Too good to get a decent draft pick and too bad to make the playoffs. Now I see that the worst place you can be is when you spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get to the middle. Once the Kenley Jansen and Masataka Yoshida contracts are announced, they'll be at around $147 million already committed for next season. Barring a rebuild, they only way out of this is if they spend another $100 million in 2023 alone (roughly $700 million total in combined contracts if you take into account the full length of each free agent deal). And all of that is before you need to re-sign Rafael Devers to a mega-deal. Do you have any hope that can happen after this nightmare off-season? I don't.
Sorry John, Linda and Chaim. It's time to light the match and blow it up. The days of the Boston Red Sox being a contender are over and the sooner they realize that, the better. Otherwise Chaim Bloom is going to be spending even more time staring blankly at his phone.