Boston Red Sox Bounce Chaim Bloom As Their Chief Baseball Officer

Frustrated at missing the baseball playoffs in two of the last three years, the Boston Red Sox made a major move Thursday, firing chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom.

“This is a really painful day for a lot of reasons, especially on the personal side of it,” said team president and chief executive officer Sam Kennedy at a hastily-called Fenway Park press conference, “but we need to be competitive.”

Tied for last place in the American League East with the New York Yankees, the Red Sox went into a Thursday doubleheader against New York with a 73-72 record, 18 games behind the front-running Baltimore Orioles. The Sox are also seven-and-a-half games behind in the race for the AL’s third and final wild-card spot.

Boston won a pennant and World Series in 2018 but then traded Mookie Betts, its best player, to the Los Angeles Dodgers after an unsuccessful attempt to extend his expiring contract.

Dave Dombrowski, now president of baseball operations with the Philadelphia Phillies, was president of baseball operations during the World Series win but was fired less than a year later.

The current Red Sox payroll of $216,772,500 ranks 11th in the American League, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, but could jump substantially under the next regime.

Kennedy indicated that the team will conduct a thorough executive search that could result in one or even two hires, either a president of baseball operations, general manager, or both. He also ruled out the return of Theo Epstein, who won a world championship during a previous nine-year stay in the Boston front office.

“It’s a tough business,” Kennedy said, “and there’s plenty of blame to go around, myself included.”

He said pitching and defense were problems for the 2023 team. “There are a lot of areas where we need to improve,” he added.

Bloom, 40, has worked in baseball for 19 years, much of it with the Tampa Bay Rays before coming to Boston. The Philadelphia native and Yale graduate was in his fourth year in the Red Sox front office.

“I want to thank Chaim Bloom but we felt a change was necessary,” said Kennedy. “We’ve always been considered a contender but the last two seasons we haven’t been there.

“We owe it to our fans to be decisive, aggressive, and clear to get back to our mandate, which is to win in October.”

Kennedy declined to comment on the team’s poor showing at the trade deadline. He also declined to comment on the future of manager Alex Cora, who guided the team to its last world championship.

“We want to look ahead,” he said, “and not look back.”

The Red Sox finished alone at the bottom of the division last year with a 78-84 record that left them 21 games behind the first-place Yankees.