Should Boston Red Sox Let Craig Breslow Handle Trade Deadline?
The Boston Red Sox are reportedly not considering making a change at Chief Baseball Officer, but is it the right decision?
Video Transcript
What's up everyone?
Zach Coe here for Roundtable.
According to Tim Healey of The Boston Globe, the Red Sox won't be making a change at their chief baseball officer position ahead of the 2026 deadline.
Healey added that the team isn't even considering moving on from CBO Craig Breslow.
Now, this was something that the organization had to do in some form or fashion before the deadline, as the external noise had been getting louder on Breslow's job security.
But the decision that they made is one that I don't necessarily know is the right one.
Since his hire ahead of the 2024 season, Breslow's handled the last two trade deadlines, and his track record is not great, to put it nicely.
We'll start with 2024, where the Red Sox found themselves at fifty-six and fifty-one, two and a half games back of the final wild card spot in the American League, where Breslow took a quantity over quality approach to the deadline, not trading out any prospects of impact, but also not adding any players of impact either.
They added James Paxton, Danny Jansen, Lucas Sims, and Luis Garcia for their playoff push, and none of them made a major impact during their time in Boston.
They combined for a negative point seven bWAR as the Red Sox went twenty-five and thirty to miss the playoffs for the third consecutive season.
In 2025, I don't think anybody needs a reminder at the disaster that was the 2025 deadline, but the Red Sox entered it at fifty-nine and fifty-one, in firm control of the second wild card in the American League.
They did, however, have two clear needs.
That is replacing the production that was lost in the 2025 trade that sent Rafael Devers to San Francisco, and find a bona fide number two to pitch behind Garrett Crochet in the playoffs.
Of course, there was that false report from Fox Sports that said the Red Sox had agreed to a trade to acquire Joe Ryan from Minnesota.
That obviously never came to fruition.
After getting played by Minnesota for really the duration of the deadline, Breslow panicked and pivoted to Dustin May, who obviously was so bad for the Red Sox that they told him to get lost before the playoffs even started.
To make matters worse with that deal, they gave up James Tibbs, who was a central piece in that Devers trade, who went on to become the n- next incarnation of Barry Bonds, the second he joins the Los Angeles organization.
Overall, Breslow has acquired players that have contributed a negative point five bWAR to the Red Sox.
And while in 2025 they did make the playoffs, they lost because they didn't have that number two behind Crochet, and they couldn't produce enough offense to get past the Yankees.
So now you head into a 2026 trade deadline where with each passing day it looks more and more like you're gonna be sellers.
With the goal of retooling your roster so that you're back to being a contender in the 2027 season, or if the lockout doesn't go to plan, the 2028 season, and you're going to rely on a guy who is O for two in duds to run this trade deadline?
I just don't know that this is the right decision for them to make, and it's something that we talked about on the last episode of the Entering Kenmore podcast, where if this season is make the playoffs or bust for Craig Breslow, then you cannot let him run the trade deadline.
That is your decision.
Your decision is already made there.
You can't let somebody run a deadline and then three months later find themselves out of a job.
What sense in the world does that make?
It remains to be seen if the Red Sox are gonna end up doing that once it's all said and done, but they've already made the first mistake in going down that path.
We'll see what happens.
The trade deadline isn't until August third at six PM, but that hasn't stopped the trade rumors from flowing really steadily over the last week, specifically involving the Red Sox, who Jeff Passan inferred could control both the reliever and outfield's market.
Keep it posted right here on Red Sox Roundtable for all the news and reaction to those trade rumors leading up to the August third deadline.
