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At the risk of sounding like a broken record as of late, the Boston Red Sox are awful in 2026. It’s a shame coming off a postseason appearance in 2025 that should have pointed president of baseball operations Craig Breslow in the right direction. Even the free-agent signings believed they were coming into a situation where they would “breeze to get to the playoffs," at least according to Isiah Kiner-Falefa. He even went on to say that his goal with signing in Boston was to be a bench player for a championship team, so even those who weren’t with the organization last year saw the direction the team should have been headed.
“Should” is the operative word in that sentence.
We’re now no longer in ‘well it’s still early’ territory, and the Red Sox are what they are as we approach the halfway point of the season. In an effort not to mince words: They are a sub .500 team that struggles at home and seems to be allergic to hitting with runners in scoring position. It’s the end of June and the season already feels lost. The team can’t keep up in a middling American League Wild Card race and, even if they somehow managed to limp their way into that third spot, they’d be certainly eliminated in short order.
With all of that being said, the most obvious path forward for the Red Sox is to let Craig Breslow go sooner than later.
Breslow is an excellent pitching coordinator. He’s drafted and developed some of the best arms that the organization has seen in years, but that’s about as far as his credentials go. He terminated most of the scouting department during the first 18 months of his tenure and the big-league club has suffered mightily from it. The team that is on the field day in and day out for the Red Sox can’t function properly as a major-league team. There’s far too many utility players with everyday roles, there’s almost zero power outside of Willson Contreras, and the bullpen has been incredibly leaky outside of Aroldis Chapman and Garrett Whitlock.
I’m not going to sit here and rehash the firing of Alex Cora and the majority of his coaching staff, but that gave us a bit of a peak behind the curtain as to the true feelings of Fenway Sports Group’s opinion of Breslow. The morning after the firings, Breslow sat at a table next to Sam Kennedy and said that the decision to move on from Cora and crew was a mutual decision. Within seconds, Kennedy pinned the decision solely on Breslow. Ownership signed off on it, of course, but they essentially looked at Breslow and said, “Okay, you can do this, but just know there’s no one else to be the fall guy if things don’t get better.” To absolutely no one’s surprise, things have arguably gotten worse. Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony have spent significant time on the injured list, Jarren Duran looks like a shell of himself at the plate, and the catching situation is maybe the most confusing roster dilemma in all of baseball.
Speaking of the catching situation, it paints a clearer picture for how Breslow didn’t learn anything from the drama that surrounded Rafael Devers last season. It was reported time and time again that Devers wasn’t spoken to about his changing roles, then when he was approached about possibly moving to first base he was combative because he felt he had been disrespected and blindsided. Now, Carlos Narvaez has spoken to The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey about how his playing time has been diminished but he hadn’t been told anything by either Chad Tracy or someone in the front office. Breslow recognizes that communication isn’t a strong point of his, but it’s gotten to the point that, according to Boston Globe’s Tim Healey, multiple officials within the organization believe that Breslow would benefit from having a “baseball interpreter” to convey his overall message to the players.
This shouldn't need to be said, but the freaking President of Baseball Operations shouldn’t need someone else to convey his message and vision to the team. If Craig Breslow can’t effectively communicate, then he doesn’t need to be in a position of leadership with the team.
What should be the final nail in the coffin for Breslow is the fact that his past two trade deadlines have been absolutely abysmal. I took at look at those deadlines to see if we could figure out what direction Breslow is going to take in 2026 and came up with the following: He struggles to pick a lane and ends up putting the team in a much worse position because of it. To add onto that, ESPN’s Buster Olney went so far as to say that “someone in ownership” was picking up the phone to talk trades with other clubs. While it shouldn’t come as a surprise that ownership has to be involved to sign off on any big trades that occur, they shouldn’t have to be the ones making the calls to get conversations started. Ownership should only be involved at the finish line of a trade, since they need to approve the money moving in each direction. If they don’t trust their front office chief enough to let him negotiate his own trades, why does he still have a job? If he can’t handle one of the most important aspects of his role, he doesn’t need to occupy space in the front office anymore.
Fenway Sports Group has publicly backed Craig Breslow so far this season, and they pretty much have to publicly. They can’t come out and say that they are considering firing him; that’s not practical nor the way you run a business. Remember, they made similar comments around this same time about both Chaim Bloom and Dave Dombrowski during their eventual final seasons with the team. It finally seems like John Henry is frustrated with the direction of the Red Sox if both Sean McAdam and David Ortiz are to be believed. If that’s the case, then the difficult decision needs to be made to move on from Craig Breslow now. If they wait much longer, they run the risk of a trade deadline that is mishandled and delay the ability to start looking for his replacement prior to the 2027 lockout. The time to act is now.
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