Craig Breslow: CBO of the Red Sox

[Maxbialystock]

On 9/22/2024 at 9:54 PM, Randy Red Sox said:

and how long do you think he can rest on that??  If we miss the post season again next year is the still ok??

You have absolutely no sense of history.  John Henry ended the 86 year drought and then won 3 more WS's by hiring smart guys and underwriting one of the top 3 payrolls in MLB for roughly 20 seasons. 

JH hired DD after the 2015 season and let him spend, spend, spend to produce the 2018 Sox, the best team in Sox history.   They still had the highest payroll in MLB in 2019 when they failed to make the postseason.  Even worse, however, was that DD wanted a whole bunch more money to keep Mookie from the Dodgers--a far wealthier franchise than the Red Sox--and to replace Price and Sale while also continuing to pay them around $50M a year for not pitching.   That's why DD got fired--there was absolutely no limit to the amount of payroll he wanted/needed to keep the Sox "competitive."  

People also forget that John Henry had MLB ownership experience  before he bought the Sox in 2002 and that after buying the Sox he hired sabermetrics expert Bill James.   Even though JH has shelled out a lot money for payrolls, he has also been interested in the cost per win.  Thus was Chaim Bloom of the highly efficient (in terms of payroll cost per win) Tampa Bay Rays hired in 2019.  But JH decided last year Chaim Bloom wasn't the right guy either and hired Breslow, 

Right now I think it's fair to say the Sox lack direction in terms of how much to spend on players.  So allow me to hypothesize why.   The 2012 Sox were dreadful and finished dead last in the AL East with an abysmal 69-93 record.  Want to guess what their attendance was that season?  37,567, which is basically max attendance for Fenway Park.   The next year, 2013, when the Sox won the AL East with a 97-65 record and then won the World Series, the attendance dropped to 34,979.  Then it went back up to 36,494 in 2014, another losing season (71-91) and was 35,564 in 2015, also a losing season (78-84).  Care to guess the Sox attendance in 2018, the best Sox season ever?  Try 35,747.  The next year, 2019, it went up slightly to 36,106 when the Sox failed to make the postseason but still had the highest payroll in MLB.  

Then came covid when attendance plummeted in both 2020 and 2021.  Since then, for 3 straight seasons, the Sox have not made it to the postseason and have averaged about 32,500 in attendance all 3 seasons.

While all of the above--winning 4 WS, having good attendance regardless of whether the Sox were winning 108 games in a season in 2018 or winning just 69 games in 2012--the overall value of the Red Sox franchise has risen to somewhere around $4B or $5B, compared to the $660M JH paid back in 2002.  

And this.  Right now the best and by far the most exciting player on the Sox is Jarren Duran, whose WAR is 8.6, which the 5th highest in MLB.  Duran is being paid the MLB minimum of $750K.  The 2d highest Sox WAR, 3.7, belongs to Devers, who has played in 19 fewer games than Duran and is paid $31M/year for 10 years.  3d highest WAR is Abreu's 3.4, and he too is paid the MLB minimum.  Ditto the next two, Rafaela's 2.7 WAR and Hamilton's 2.6 WAR, are worth the MLB minimum salary.  Wong's WAR of 1.7, 7th best on the Sox, earns him the MLB minimum.   Yoshida is paid I think $18M/year for 5 years and his WAR this year is 1.5.  Story's WAR is 0.9 (which is fantastic for just 24 games) costs the Sox $22.5M.  

So, if you are JH and sitting on a proverbial gold mine worth $4B-$5B and you can see that the fans just don't care how good or bad the team is, why should you compete with the Dodgers for whoever--or the likes of Mookie, Price, Sale, etc, etc?  Plus those WAR's on the 2024 Sox suggest that shelling out big bucks for anybody is just a waste of money.  And I forgot to mention the pitching!  3 of the 4 top WAR's belong to Houck (3.7), Crawford (2.6), and Bello (1.7), and their total combined salary is less than $3M.  The 4th starter, Pivetta, also has a WAR of 1.7 and he's paid $7.5M.  And the closer Jansen, WAR 1.4, is paid $16M.  

 

 

 

 

[mvp 78]

34 minutes ago, Maxbialystock said:

So, if you are JH and sitting on a proverbial gold mine worth $4B-$5B and you can see that the fans just don't care how good or bad the team is, why should you compete with the Dodgers for whoever--or the likes of Mookie, Price, Sale, etc, etc?  Plus those WAR's on the 2024 Sox suggest that shelling out big bucks for anybody is just a waste of money.  And I forgot to mention the pitching!  3 of the 4 top WAR's belong to Houck (3.7), Crawford (2.6), and Bello (1.7), and their total combined salary is less than $3M.  The 4th starter, Pivetta, also has a WAR of 1.7 and he's paid $7.5M.  And the closer Jansen, WAR 1.4, is paid $16M.  

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/01/29/boston-red-sox-nesn-tv-ratings

NESN's ratings for Sox games have cratered with the recent Sox woes. The attendance per game is 3,000 less than it was in 2019 and earlier. Now, the seats are being filled with out of towners. Eventually, that will dry up too. 

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

If Henry is set for life -- what billionaires aren't -- he can presumably do whatever he wants.

So if he owns a sports team and wants to win, he can spend all he wants signing talent -- and paying luxury taxes -- and it won't make a difference in his future.

Or he could chose to stop paying market value for top talent, and instead spend just enough on bodies to fill jerseys so his team can still play games and sell tickets. He'll still make a profit, but why does that even matter to him at his age?

Maybe he's just a competitive business guy, and gets off more on making money than winning trophies -- because at Fenway Park, Boston, those aren't mutually connected.

If not -- if you don't need the profits or aren't going to try to build a winner -- why even own a pro sports team?

[dgalehouse]

Congratulations to Craig Breslow on winning his first participation trophy. 

[mvp 78]

23 minutes ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

If Henry is set for life -- what billionaires aren't -- he can presumably do whatever he wants.

So if he owns a sports team and wants to win, he can spend all he wants signing talent -- and paying luxury taxes -- and it won't make a difference in his future.

Or he could chose to stop paying market value for top talent, and instead spend just enough on bodies to fill jerseys so his team can still play games and sell tickets. He'll still make a profit, but why does that even matter to him at his age?

Maybe he's just a competitive business guy, and gets off more on making money than winning trophies -- because at Fenway Park, Boston, those aren't mutually connected.

If not -- if you don't need the profits or aren't going to try to build a winner -- why even own a pro sports team?

He treats the Sox as a real estate venture now. As long as the baseball isn't killing the real estate portion, he doesn't care. 

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

1 hour ago, mvp 78 said:

He treats the Sox as a real estate venture now. As long as the baseball isn't killing the real estate portion, he doesn't care. 

I forgot. His new challenge for kicks. Why can't he just go back down south, where real estate is cheaper and make a contribution to society by developing jobs in alternative energies that help reduce the increasing threats of catastrophic storms?

[moonslav59]

I like what Max said, but I think Sox fans do "care" about winning and losing, even if they keep buying tickets when we lose. I'm not sure JH cares, if we care or not.

I hope he throws a bone to Brez- a bigger one than he threw Bloom in any of his 4 years.

If he doesn't, we'll be stuck hoping Brez can do what Bloom simply could not do: find enough bargain basement deals that turn to gold, or at least silver.

In theory, we could just keep the budget about the same or raise it slightly, and Brez could have a pretty good chunk of change to improve the team, but there would be very little room for error. No injured $19M pitcher. No signings made with 2026 in mind. No trades like Sale-Grissom.

 

[Duran Is The Man]

2 hours ago, mvp 78 said:

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/01/29/boston-red-sox-nesn-tv-ratings

NESN's ratings for Sox games have cratered with the recent Sox woes. The attendance per game is 3,000 less than it was in 2019 and earlier. Now, the seats are being filled with out of towners. Eventually, that will dry up too. 

looks like Henry is (deservedly) reaping the rewards of being a tightwad POS. 

[Old Red]

2 hours ago, dgalehouse said:

Congratulations to Craig Breslow on winning his first participation trophy. 

With the 12th pick in the 2024 HOBO draft the Red Sox pick Brez.

[moonslav59]

One valid argument is that we have settled for mediocre pitching in hopes the improve, like Houck did, this year. It's been more about adding quantity rather than top quality. I've never been a fan of that philosophy, although pitching depth is essential to winning, too.

That being said, and to Max's point about the WAR we got from pitchers making min wage or near it, the Sox had 5 SP'ers with 85+ IP and an fWAR at 1.0 or better. By my count, only 6 other teams had that.

We had 4 pitchers with 130+ IP and an fWAR at 1.6 or better: 3.9 Houck, 2.0 Bello, 1.9 Crawford and 1.6 Bello. Only 4 other teams had that:

KCR: 4 at 2.5+

SEA: 4 at 2.3+

WSH: 4 at 1.7+

HOU: 4 at .6+ 

In one way, this is very nice: in another way, I can see JH saying, we have 4 coming back with 1.)+ and add Gio, so we are all set.

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

2 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

In one way, this is very nice: in another way, I can see JH saying, we have 4 coming back with 1.)+ and add Gio, so we are all set.

... John would be speaking from the experience of his zero days as a pro pitcher rehabbing from major reconstructive elbow surgery.

[Deja Doh]

The second half of the season (since All Star break) the Red Sox are 10 games below 0.500.  That falls on the Manger and GM.  The were looking at the 15 games 82-96 up to the break and saw 10-5, but then went 4-8 to end the month of July.  Beating up (33-14) on losing teams like the White Sox (4-3), Angels (4-2), Miami (3-0), A's (5-1), Pirates (3-0), Rangers (4-2), Blue Jays (8-5), Nats (2-1).  They are over 0.500 with only 2 of the 14 teams still alive for the playoffs Phillies (2-1) and the Royals (4-2).  I am surprised they are 0.500 right now with 2 to go.

[vegasbob]

The Paxton and then Hill  acquisitions were odd moves for a team still in contention.  In retrospect, both were useless gestures , not moves of a team competing.  

Breslow has made some improvements but very offset by players/pitchers put on the field this year.

Is it possible that he is not a good judge of MLB talent despite his playing experience ?      Or is his Yalie analytic intelligence getting in his way, a la Bloom ?

[Duran Is The Man]

Just now, vegasbob said:

The Paxton and then Hill  acquisitions were odd moves for a team still in contention.  In retrospect, both were useless gestures , not moves of a team competing.  

Breslow has made some improvements but very offset by players/pitchers put on the field this year.

Is it possible that he is not a good judge of MLB talent despite his playing experience ?      Or is his Yalie analytic intelligence getting in his way, a la Bloom ?

it's all part of the sham. and an incompetent FO.

[moonslav59]

The Guardians had the best record in MLB in late June, and are something like 41-41 since then.

It's been a weird year. Several of the best teams in MLB had some awful stretches.

[Bellhorn04]

18 hours ago, Maxbialystock said:

JH hired DD after the 2015 season and let him spend, spend, spend to produce the 2018 Sox, the best team in Sox history.   They still had the highest payroll in MLB in 2019 when they failed to make the postseason.  Even worse, however, was that DD wanted a whole bunch more money to keep Mookie from the Dodgers--a far wealthier franchise than the Red Sox--and to replace Price and Sale while also continuing to pay them around $50M a year for not pitching.   That's why DD got fired--there was absolutely no limit to the amount of payroll he wanted/needed to keep the Sox "competitive." 

Max, you keep saying these things over and over.

Now, do you have any links to the articles where you got this information from?

I would especially like to see the one about DD wanting more money "to keep Mookie from the Dodgers". 

 

[Bellhorn04]

14 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

We had 4 pitchers with 130+ IP and an fWAR at 1.6 or better: 3.9 Houck, 2.0 Bello, 1.9 Crawford and 1.6 Bello. Only 4 other teams had that:

KCR: 4 at 2.5+

SEA: 4 at 2.3+

WSH: 4 at 1.7+

HOU: 4 at .6+ 

In one way, this is very nice: in another way, I can see JH saying, we have 4 coming back with 1.)+ and add Gio, so we are all set.

You've got Bello listed twice.  One must be Pivetta.

[moonslav59]

3 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

You've got Bello listed twice.  One must be Pivetta.

1.6 Pivetta, who might have just pitched his last game with the Sox.

BTW, he's at 2.0, now.

3.9 Houck, 2.0 Bello & Pivetta and 1.9 Crawford.

If Crawford has a good game, today, we could have 4 SP'ers over 2.0

SIERA: 3.31 Pivetta, 3.73 Houck, 4.08 Crawford, 4.13 Bell0, 4.45 Criswell

xFIP 3.50 Pivetta, 3.58 Houck, 3.87 Bello, 4.35 Crawford, 4.43 Criswell

ERA-: 73 Houck, 96 Criswell, 97 Pivetta, 98 Crawford, 105 Bello

I'm not so sure we can expect Giolito to match Pivetta's numbers or Fitts to match Criswell's. Can we also count on Houck, Crawford and Bello to all go 160+ IP with equal of better numbers?

 

[moonslav59]

bWAR:

3.7 Houck

2.5 Crawford

1.9 Pivetta

1.7 Bello

0.7 Criswell

Average bWAR & fWAR:

3.8 Houck

2.3 Crawford

2.0 Pivetta

1.9 Bello

0.9 Criswell

[notin]

13 hours ago, vegasbob said:

The Paxton and then Hill  acquisitions were odd moves for a team still in contention.  In retrospect, both were useless gestures , not moves of a team competing.  

Breslow has made some improvements but very offset by players/pitchers put on the field this year.

Is it possible that he is not a good judge of MLB talent despite his playing experience ?      Or is his Yalie analytic intelligence getting in his way, a la Bloom ?

Every team makes moves like that.  Not like those players cost anything or blocked other moves.  The Dodgers brought in a pair of perennially injured arms in Brent Honeywell and Elieser Gonzalez.  That doesn’t mean Friedman’s analytics are out of whack or he’s incompetent.  It just means he’s continually active…

[notin]

4 hours ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Max, you keep saying these things over and over.

Now, do you have any links to the articles where you got this information from?

I would especially like to see the one about DD wanting more money "to keep Mookie from the Dodgers". 

 

I think he was not speaking literally about Mookie and the Dodgers,  but rather just saying DD wanted to keep him as opposed to what ultimately happened.

DD had no way of knowing where Mookie would wind up 3 years later…

[notin]

19 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

I like what Max said, but I think Sox fans do "care" about winning and losing, even if they keep buying tickets when we lose. I'm not sure JH cares, if we care or not.

I hope he throws a bone to Brez- a bigger one than he threw Bloom in any of his 4 years.

If he doesn't, we'll be stuck hoping Brez can do what Bloom simply could not do: find enough bargain basement deals that turn to gold, or at least silver.

In theory, we could just keep the budget about the same or raise it slightly, and Brez could have a pretty good chunk of change to improve the team, but there would be very little room for error. No injured $19M pitcher. No signings made with 2026 in mind. No trades like Sale-Grissom.

 

Breslow has an advantage Bloom did not.  Breslow inherited a team with several young players breaking out and a farm system with 6 prospects in the Top 100.  That was the plan all along - get the farm going and start producing with young, competitive CHEAP talent.  Hopefully the competitive part improves a little more in 2025…

[notin]

11 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

The Guardians had the best record in MLB in late June, and are something like 41-41 since then.

It's been a weird year. Several of the best teams in MLB had some awful stretches.

The White Sox are 8-42 in their division. 5 of those 8 wins are against the first place Guardians…

[moonslav59]

41 minutes ago, notin said:

Breslow has an advantage Bloom did not.  Breslow inherited a team with several young players breaking out and a farm system with 6 prospects in the Top 100.  That was the plan all along - get the farm going and start producing with young, competitive CHEAP talent.  Hopefully the competitive part improves a little more in 2025…

I realize this, but the second part of Bloom's role was to find lower cost players that produced over their pay grade. He had a few hits: Pivetta, Schreiber, Refsnyder and Arroyo for a couple years. A few one year players did okay to fine, like Wacha, Hill, Strahm and the one year we had Renfroe, but mostly, he failed miserably with the Tampa Bay Way.

I'm not sure Brez will have the tight budgets Bloom had for 4 years, but yes, you are right. Brez has young players- many still pre-arb and no stars like Betts, Bogey, JD, Nate, Sale and others coming up on big payday years. Losing Jansen, Martin, O'Neill and Pivetta pales in comparison to what Bloom had to watch walk out the door, then try to replace with a shoe box budget.

The years of control on our core players is in great shape, and so many are pre-arb or year one arb players that his budget will not have the same stresses Bloom had. If we knew JH would spend big, again, this would be great news, but it may end up just being a way for JH to make more money, instead.

I'm not pinning my hopes on JH opening up his wallet, again, but in reality, if we keep our budget about the same, we should still get a lot better, starting in 2025 and maxing out around 2027, unless prospects like Arias, Cespedes, Perales, Bleis, the Garcia brothers and others jump like Campbell did.

I have to think the unbalanced nature of our 26 and 40 man roster, as well as the top farm prospects towards everyday players will be addressed, this winter and maybe beyond. The Dugo for 3 pitchers and Yorke for Priester deal could just be signs of more to come. Adding Slaten, Sandlin, Criswell and I Campbell may help, too.

I'm very optimistic about our extended future, despite my trepidation over the continuing tight  budgets.

[Bellhorn04]

2 hours ago, notin said:

I think he was not speaking literally about Mookie and the Dodgers,  but rather just saying DD wanted to keep him as opposed to what ultimately happened.

DD had no way of knowing where Mookie would wind up 3 years later…

I would really like Max to explain it himself.

Also, Max was talking about the year 2019, so your "3 years later" only adds to my confusion LOL

[notin]

16 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

I would really like Max to explain it himself.

Also, Max was talking about the year 2019, so your "3 years later" only adds to my confusion LOL

Ok, but before he points it out, he never limited the Mookie negotiations to 2019…

[dgalehouse]

On 9/27/2024 at 1:19 PM, Maxbialystock said:

You have absolutely no sense of history.  John Henry ended the 86 year drought and then won 3 more WS's by hiring smart guys and underwriting one of the top 3 payrolls in MLB for roughly 20 seasons. 

JH hired DD after the 2015 season and let him spend, spend, spend to produce the 2018 Sox, the best team in Sox history.   They still had the highest payroll in MLB in 2019 when they failed to make the postseason.  Even worse, however, was that DD wanted a whole bunch more money to keep Mookie from the Dodgers--a far wealthier franchise than the Red Sox--and to replace Price and Sale while also continuing to pay them around $50M a year for not pitching.   That's why DD got fired--there was absolutely no limit to the amount of payroll he wanted/needed to keep the Sox "competitive."  

People also forget that John Henry had MLB ownership experience  before he bought the Sox in 2002 and that after buying the Sox he hired sabermetrics expert Bill James.   Even though JH has shelled out a lot money for payrolls, he has also been interested in the cost per win.  Thus was Chaim Bloom of the highly efficient (in terms of payroll cost per win) Tampa Bay Rays hired in 2019.  But JH decided last year Chaim Bloom wasn't the right guy either and hired Breslow, 

Right now I think it's fair to say the Sox lack direction in terms of how much to spend on players.  So allow me to hypothesize why.   The 2012 Sox were dreadful and finished dead last in the AL East with an abysmal 69-93 record.  Want to guess what their attendance was that season?  37,567, which is basically max attendance for Fenway Park.   The next year, 2013, when the Sox won the AL East with a 97-65 record and then won the World Series, the attendance dropped to 34,979.  Then it went back up to 36,494 in 2014, another losing season (71-91) and was 35,564 in 2015, also a losing season (78-84).  Care to guess the Sox attendance in 2018, the best Sox season ever?  Try 35,747.  The next year, 2019, it went up slightly to 36,106 when the Sox failed to make the postseason but still had the highest payroll in MLB.  

Then came covid when attendance plummeted in both 2020 and 2021.  Since then, for 3 straight seasons, the Sox have not made it to the postseason and have averaged about 32,500 in attendance all 3 seasons.

While all of the above--winning 4 WS, having good attendance regardless of whether the Sox were winning 108 games in a season in 2018 or winning just 69 games in 2012--the overall value of the Red Sox franchise has risen to somewhere around $4B or $5B, compared to the $660M JH paid back in 2002.  

And this.  Right now the best and by far the most exciting player on the Sox is Jarren Duran, whose WAR is 8.6, which the 5th highest in MLB.  Duran is being paid the MLB minimum of $750K.  The 2d highest Sox WAR, 3.7, belongs to Devers, who has played in 19 fewer games than Duran and is paid $31M/year for 10 years.  3d highest WAR is Abreu's 3.4, and he too is paid the MLB minimum.  Ditto the next two, Rafaela's 2.7 WAR and Hamilton's 2.6 WAR, are worth the MLB minimum salary.  Wong's WAR of 1.7, 7th best on the Sox, earns him the MLB minimum.   Yoshida is paid I think $18M/year for 5 years and his WAR this year is 1.5.  Story's WAR is 0.9 (which is fantastic for just 24 games) costs the Sox $22.5M.  

So, if you are JH and sitting on a proverbial gold mine worth $4B-$5B and you can see that the fans just don't care how good or bad the team is, why should you compete with the Dodgers for whoever--or the likes of Mookie, Price, Sale, etc, etc?  Plus those WAR's on the 2024 Sox suggest that shelling out big bucks for anybody is just a waste of money.  And I forgot to mention the pitching!  3 of the 4 top WAR's belong to Houck (3.7), Crawford (2.6), and Bello (1.7), and their total combined salary is less than $3M.  The 4th starter, Pivetta, also has a WAR of 1.7 and he's paid $7.5M.  And the closer Jansen, WAR 1.4, is paid $16M.  

 

 

 

 

Max, you are making stuff up and posting it as if it is a known fact. And posting it ten times does not change things. 

[illinoisredsox]

3 hours ago, notin said:

The White Sox are 8-42 in their division. 5 of those 8 wins are against the first place Guardians…

And therein is the sole reason the Tigers, Royals and Twins are contenders for the last two wild card slots.

[S5Dewey]

4 hours ago, moonslav59 said:

The years of control on our core players is in great shape, and so many are pre-arb or year one arb players that his budget will not have the same stresses Bloom had. If we knew JH would spend big, again, this would be great news, but it may end up just being a way for JH to make more money, instead.

I believe Moon is right ^here^ and this should be "make or break" year for JH.  JH is in a position right now where he can afford to pay some big money for some big pitchers.  If he doesn't do this it's going to be apparent that he truly values his pocketbook over the Red Sox.

OTOH, there is the belief (and I confess to being one of those believers) that because this team has so many young, impact, non-pitchers that they were going to take 2024 and see what they've got - who can play at the ML level and who can't- and use the 2024-25 winter to 1) decide who to keep, who to trade, and who to cut loose, and 2) start to assemble a pitching staff that will lead them to being more than "competitive".

If my second paragraphs is what's happening we're going to see some controversial trades in the off season, seeing some fan-favorite young players get traded.  As an example, I can see two or even three of our young position players traded to the CWS for Garrett Crochet. Crochet is good, young, and cheap, and the CWS aren't going anywhere even with him  in 2025 so he's a good match for a team with young talent to spare,  That's the Sox,  But we have to be prepared to give up a Roman Anthony ++ to get him.  

As usual, JMO!

[moonslav59]

I think the CWS will certainly ask for Anthony, but I doubt any team offers them more than Mayer, Wink & Abreu. That might even be too much to offer. 

Crochet only has 2 years of control left and only one good season under his belt- and under 150 IP, at that.