mvp 78

I think he's going with the vision that Henry wanted "roster flexibility, no max contracts" and has to run most decisions by Henry. The yes man is clearly Sam.

COL's current SS leaves something to be desired. Just eat everything but the minimum and send him back there.

I think there was underlying tension with that too. Many people assumed that Cora would last until the end of his contract and would eventually get a FO role. He probably thought he could do whatever and not worry about it. Really tough spot for Brez to be in if the guy you're in charge of is perceived as taking your job in a few years.

Yeah, I think there just is a lack of an organizational plan because of meddling from people outside of the CBO's office. There needs to be one voice and just have the org head in that direction. If that direction fails, so be it. There's been too much zigzagging lately (ex. 2022 deadline trading Vaz, but pulling back and not trading anyone else). Their messaging and actions can sometimes be incoherent.

They aren't doing the second part! That's the problem. Build the farm AND spend. The offseason spending was a wet fart of half measures as they all have been for several years.

They started off 9-15 due to resting their starters after a playoff run. Many teams have World Series hangovers. They still had an 87-75 Pythag. Henry just didn't want to invest in the team anymore. He didn't want to keep Betts anymore. DD didn't want to be the GM that traded Betts, so he couldn't pull the trigger on a deal. Henry dumped DD because they weren't aligned. We heard all about roster flexibility and building around young players after that. Why would a revenue behemoth need to go that route?!?!? It doesn't make sense. It had never been that way before and they had a ton of success with that model. The new Red Sox baseball isn't working. It just isn't. Fenway is packed with visiting fans. The team is not typically playing playoff caliber baseball. They may be making money now, but they are slowly losing the zeitgeist and it could be very hard to get it back.

It all comes down from Henry. If he's the one making the huge decisions, the Red Sox are stuck. Brez was going in one direction, Cora was going in another. Henry is currently fine sailing along with Brez, but that could change at any moment. Just wait until the wind shifts.

Bloom was a nerd, but he'd at least go to the clubhouse and talk to the players. He was accountable.

Joe Kelly? He was good in '17, but was a rollercoaster in '18. It makes sense that they'd let him go. He only had one good full season after leaving the Sox. Kimbrel stopped being able to close out games in the playoffs. It was a warning sign for the direction his career was going. They were 100% right for not re-signing him.

I would just say that they moved KC around too much in MiLB. I wished they had just given him a position and stuck with it. I think he didn't look great in the IF so they tried it out in the OF too. They were just surprised at how quickly his bat moved him up and they weren't able get his glove ready.

Who's the Red Sox hater now?

The overall problem is that you need to treat players as human beings and not just as lines on a spreadsheet. That's the pitfall here if they really want success year in and year out. You can use the stats and metrics to your advantage, but you still need to be able to connect with people personally.

That 2021 team had Eovaldi, Sale, Bogey and JD. They weren't exactly running out a small payroll. It was 6th in the league per luxury tax and 3rd in cash.

They are NEVER selling the team. This ballclub and the surrounding properties makes too much money. Breslow is doing exactly what Henry wants him to do. You'll get to gripe about his moves next offseason too.

A monster of an article by Joon Lee. Damn.

Several executives and agents describe Breslow as tethered to the organization’s internal models and, at times, inflexible. In their view, the Red Sox don’t just negotiate cautiously; they negotiate as if deviating from projections is a failure, even when the moment calls for risk. Rival evaluators say the club behaves like an organization waiting for the data to remove all doubt — and in a sport built on varying degrees of uncertainty, that moment never comes. This reputation is registering with players as well. A veteran member of the 2025 team described the club’s approach as “arrogant,” arguing that the front office’s model-driven posture turns information into ironclad dogma. The handling of Bregman was a failure not just to read the market but also an ideological one, with the organization treating free agency like a transaction to be optimized, rather than a relationship to be managed. “It’s ‘Moneyball’ computer beep-boop nonsense,” the veteran player said. Inside the Red Sox, several people point to a larger structural issue. The team is run very differently than Fenway Sports Group’s other flagship property, Liverpool. There, longtime executive Michael Gordon serves as a true bridge between ownership and sporting operations, enforcing budget discipline while empowering soccer leadership to act decisively. In Boston, no such intermediary exists. Major baseball decisions routinely bypass Kennedy and flow directly to John Henry.

When the Red Sox fired Dombrowski in 2019, I was reporting on the team for ESPN. Sources in the front office explicitly said they wanted to recreate the Dodgers model in Boston. The implication was clear: a data-driven, well-funded franchise that had figured out how to marry analytics with sustained financial commitment. The Red Sox wanted to be that. What they became was something different... The Red Sox took a different lesson from the same moment. Flexibility over commitment. Risk management over star retention. The worst outcome not a lost championship, but a bad contract on the books.

As internal resistance to a Betts extension grew, a different story began to circulate publicly: Betts didn’t want to be in Boston. The narrative first surfaced in off-the-record conversations — that Betts preferred to play closer to his hometown of Nashville or wasn’t fully committed to the market. Betts and his inner circle were confused by this narrative. He was direct with those around the team: he wanted to stay in the only place he had known in the majors, and he wanted to be paid at market value.

Having recently committed significant money to core members of the title team, including Chris Sale and Nathan Eovaldi, (Henry) increasingly viewed long-term contracts as liabilities rather than investments. That philosophical divide marked the beginning of the end of Dombrowski’s tenure and reshaped how the organization spoke about its choices.

But what mattered more was what the Devers trade revealed: an organization unable to articulate a coherent plan, internally or externally. With no single voice owning the decision, confusion spread beyond the clubhouse to agents, rival executives and the fan base.

Around the league, several general managers describe the Red Sox as a franchise embroiled in an identity crisis. They carry the expectations of a big-market team — ticket prices, media scrutiny, historical weight — while behaving like a risk-averse small-market team. The result is a club that neither maximizes its financial advantages nor fully commits to restraint, judging by the $130 million invested in pitcher Ranger Suarez and the total of $7 million spent on free-agent additions Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Danny Coulombe. Spending is reserved for moments when projections suggest overwhelming odds, not merely a competitive window. And as long as Fenway fills, jerseys sell and hope flickers each spring, the model holds. Winning the World Series becomes a nice surprise rather than the goal.

He wasn't doing anything with the players (part of the problem). He did handpick the coaches though.

Marcelo's defense is great. He only played 43 games in AAA. Roman was great last year including his defense.

WC40 Abreu Wong Yoshida? Rafaela - except for the defense downgrade Monasterio Some of the other guys have shown some signs, but it'll take time to get their stats back.

They should be doing defensive drills all the time. Is there a problem with that? Duran needed extra OF work one offseason after being promoted.