6 Best Options to Replace Chaim Bloom and Fix the Red Sox
The Chaim Bloom era is already over for the Boston Red Sox.
Nearly four years after they hired him as chief baseball officer in October 2019, the Red Sox announced Thursday that they parted ways with Bloom. To use the colloquial expression, they fired him.
Speculation had been building that the 40-year-old Bloom was going to be shown the door, and it's hard to say there was any dissonance between that and the state of the Red Sox. Albeit with a winning record at 73-72, the team entered Thursday threatening to finish last in the American League East for the third time in four seasons.
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Boston's ownership, up to and including principal owner John Henry, shares the blame for where the Red Sox are right now. But since there's no deposing them, what matters now is how the team is broken and who might fix it.
The State of the Red Sox
Looking back now, Bloom's misses are easier to spot than his hits.
Were it not for the even more infamous sale of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, Bloom's trade of Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers in February 2020 would be the worst deal in Red Sox history. His fateful missteps otherwise include a baffling strategy at the 2022 trade deadline, losing Xander Bogaerts and Nathan Eovaldi to free agency last winter and a failure to improve a team on the cusp at this year's trade deadline.
In fairness, it's not as if Bloom didn't have any hits. The Red Sox fell only two games shy of the World Series in 2021, and the club's future looks brighter now than it did in 2019.
The Red Sox at least have a strong offense, with Rafael Devers, Triston Casas and Jarren Duran headlining a strong core of 26-and-under hitters and free-agent signee Masataka Yoshida proving to be a hit despite initial reservations about his $90 million contract. On the mound, 24-year-old Brayan Bello has established himself as an ace to build around.
Meanwhile, the farm system could be worse.
Though B/R's Joel Reuter and MLB.com only fancy it as the No. 16 system in MLB, Baseball America is more bullish in ranking it at No. 5. Either way, there's little disagreement that shortstop Marcelo Mayer, outfielders Roman Anthony and Cedanne Rafaela and catcher Kyle Teel are prized up-and-comers.
The payroll also could be in worse shape. Whereas the Red Sox opened each season with top-10 payrolls annually between 2000 and 2022, they opened with the 12th-highest payroll this year.
How Must the Red Sox Be Fixed?
All of this is to say that whoever replaces Bloom on a full-time basis—general manager Brian O'Halloran is running day-to-day operations in the interim—will be inheriting a favorable situation. But they'll still have work to do.
If there's one area in which the Red Sox absolutely need to get better, it's on defense. It's not just that they're worse than other teams at fielding the ball, but by how much. Their minus-50 Outs Above Average are 27 fewer than the next-worst teams.
Bello aside, starting pitching is likewise a problem area for Boston. The club's rotation ranks among MLB's dregs with a 4.86 ERA, in part because of its proneness to the long ball.
Though the young guys aren't going anywhere, Boston's lineup is nonetheless in danger of becoming imbalanced. If Justin Turner declines his player option for 2024, both he and Adam Duvall will be free agents this winter. The Red Sox would thus stand to lose their two primary sources of right-handed thump.
In addition to these short-term matters, Bloom's successor will also need to ensure the wellbeing of the club's current and future prospect base. The Red Sox need to make improvements to scouting and coaching infrastructure wherever possible. Despite positive developments more recently, it would be ideal if much of said infrastructure was committed to pitching.
Ranking 6 Options to Replace Bloom
And now for the big question: Who can the Red Sox get to accomplish all this?
This is basically wish-list fodder for the time being, so you'll have to take the upcoming list of six options with a grain of salt. They nonetheless stand out because A) they're hypothetically hireable and B) because they've shown they can do good work.
6. Billy Eppler, New York Mets General Manager
With the Mets having hired David Stearns as their president of baseball operations, Eppler is now an underling and therefore looking at an uncertain future within the organization.
Eppler is the guy who signed Shohei Ohtani in 2017, so he should be Boston's guy if the plan is to go all-in on an Ohtani pursuit this winter. But that's perhaps the only reason to go after him. He ended his Los Angeles Angels tenure without much to show for it, and he was frankly only ever a placeholder in Queens.
5. Mike Hazen, Arizona Diamondbacks Executive Vice President and General Manager
Whether Hazen is actually a realistic option for the Red Sox is debatable. He's the top executive in Arizona's front office, after all, and he's on a multiyear deal to boot.
Otherwise, Hazen is a Massachussetts native who worked in the Red Sox front office between 2006 and 2016. Save for a disastrous 2021 season, the Diamondbacks have mostly been competitive under his watch, and the 2023 iteration has something Boston only wishes it had: one of the best defenses in the league.
4. Sam Fuld, Philadelphia Phillies General Manager
Fuld is a New Hampshire native who grew up rooting for the Red Sox, and he might have already worked in the organization had things gone differently in 2020. He was in the running to be named Boston's manager before Alex Cora took the job back then.
As GM of the Phillies under president of baseball operations (and erstwhile Red Sox front office chief) Dave Dombrowski, Fuld helped guide a run to the World Series in 2022, with another possibly in the cards this season. The organization has had an unusually high hit rate on free agents, so Fuld is an ideal option if the Red Sox want to pursue a quick turnaround in 2024.
3. Thad Levine, Minnesota Twins General Manager
Levine and president of baseball operations Derek Falvey have won more than they've lost since taking control of Minnesota's front office in 2017, and this year's team is likely to make it four trips to the playoffs in seven years.
It's less than easy to summarize how such success has been achieved, but what should really appeal to Boston right now is that Twins starters lead the American League in fWAR. Getting one of the guys who can claim credit for that would be huge.
2. Mike Chernoff, Cleveland Guardians General Manager
Only three teams have won games at a better clip than the Guardians since Chernoff took his post underneath president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti in 2016. They've done so despite regularly ranking in the bottom half and even the bottom third in payroll since then.
The Red Sox should thus be looking at Chernoff and wondering what he could do with a bigger budget. If he were to build a pitching factory in Boston similar to the one in Cleveland, even better.
1. Brandon Gomes, Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager
Gomes has worked as GM under Andrew Friedman only for the past two seasons, but these two seasons have only added to the latter's unrivaled run of success over the last decade.
The Dodgers have enjoyed the best of both worlds, regularly running out top-five payrolls yet also maintaining a remarkably fruitful player development machine. Beyond his up-close-and-personal experience with such things, it's a nice bonus that Gomes is yet another native of Massachusetts.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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