Red Sox
The second-year chief baseball officer has made some controversial moves.
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Red Sox reportedly explored Rafael Devers trade with several teams before settling on Giants deal
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Alex Cora and Red Sox players discussed ‘awkward’ timing of matchup vs. Rafael Devers, Giants
Craig Breslow’s attempt at streamlining the Red Sox’ baseball operations department has drawn some significant pushback.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan published a piece on Friday about the fallout from the Rafael Devers trade, and in it he described a scene that resembled the 1999 film “Office Space.”
The Red Sox fired around 50 people last year in an attempt to trim “fat” that had persisted through previous iterations of the Sox front office. The scouting department was hit hard. Passan described it as being “gutted.”
The moves did not sit well with a number of longtime employees, some of whom are still bitter.
“There are definitely turncoats internally plotting against Bres,” Passan wrote.
The report mentioned the firing of scouting supervisor Carl Moesche, who was terminated after he said “Thanks Bres, you [expletive] stiff” at the end of a Zoom call he thought had ended.
“His words were catnip to those aggrieved by the Devers trade,” Passan said of the firing. “And if a low-level employee’s gripe can turn into a rallying cry for paying customers, it might be time for an attempt to eliminate chaos from the franchise’s playbook.”
Trading the team’s most prolific slugger over a power struggle days after the team swept the rival Yankees could certainly be characterized as chaotic. Devers felt “gobsmacked”, “betrayed”, and “blindsided” by the news, according to the report.
The team had brought in a Gold Glover at Devers’s position, asked him to switch to designated hitter, then pivoted again and asked him to play first base when Triston Casas went down with an injury. Devers’s reluctance to follow the plans got him traded.
“Boston absolutely botched this entire Devers situation,” a rival official told Passan, “and somehow it all resulted in them getting to dump what was both an underwater contract and a distraction while also getting a bunch of value back in return.”
“It was like, ‘Oops, we overpaid for a decade of our bat-only star, pissed him off publicly, then continued to bungle every subsequent opportunity to get things right. Why don’t you give us a controllable mid-rotation starter and your first-round pick from last year and help us get out of it?”
Devers has since changed his tune, saying that he will play wherever San Francisco wants him to play. He has a fresh start out on the West Coast. The Red Sox were able to get out from under his contract.
Breslow, in his second year as chief baseball officer, has already traded a homegrown star.
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