FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The Boston media often gets right to the point. Especially when the intrepid Jonny Miller of WBZ radio, who is covering his 52nd Spring Training, is the one asking the first question.
On Tuesday, the eve of the first workout for pitchers and catchers, Miller asked the following of Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom: “Do you think your job is on the line this year?”
Bloom didn’t look or sound like a man who was feeling the heat.
“Good question. You know what? I haven’t thought about it. I don’t think about things that way,” said Bloom. “It’s not something that I think is productive to think about, not something I control. What I control is trying to put us in position to win and position to do what we’re trying to do, which is make our fans happy, so that’s what I’m focused on.”
As Bloom enters his fourth season running the Red Sox's front office, here is a quick recap of his first three.
2020: 24-36 record, fifth place in the American League East. Mookie Betts was traded for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong before the season. Top starters Chris Sale and Eduardo Rodriguez didn’t pitch at all due to health issues.
2021: 92-70 record, second place in the AL East. Boston won the AL Wild Card game against the Yankees, upset the 100-win Rays in the AL Division Series and had a 2-1 lead against the Astros in the AL Championship Series before losing in six games. Bloom had a significant hand in that surprising season with the offseason acquisitions of Kiké Hernández, Hunter Renfroe and Adam Ottavino, not to mention the Rule 5 selection of Garrett Whitlock and the Trade Deadline deal for Kyle Schwarber.
2022: 78-84 record, fifth place in the AL East. Bloom didn’t do much to address the bullpen leading into the season, and that cost the Sox. The loss of Sale, who broke three different bones last year, didn’t help. Nor did Trevor Story getting hit on the right hand by a pitch in July, limiting his availability and productivity the rest of the way.
That brings us to the present. Given that this is a results-oriented business, Bloom is the first to acknowledge the team’s level of success under his watch needs to improve.
“We know we need to be better,” Bloom said. “It's no secret, we weren't good enough last year. We just weren't. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. And it's something we spent a lot of time thinking about. We brought in a lot of players who I think have a chance to contribute in different ways. Some of them are veterans. And then we also have some interesting young players, some who came from the outside, and a lot coming from within that I think have a lot of upside that we need to tap into and we need to help them reach.”
The offseason had its ups and downs. Xander Bogaerts slipped away to San Diego on an 11-year, $280 million deal, but Rafael Devers was secured through 2033 with a 10-year, $313.5 million extension that starts in ’24.
Bloom hopes that Masataka Yoshida, Justin Turner, Adam Duvall, Kenley Jansen and Corey Kluber can rejuvenate the club much like the acquisitions he made prior to the 2021 season. There is optimism that two of the team’s top prospects -- first baseman Triston Casas and righty Brayan Bello -- are ready to make significant contributions to the team. At this moment in time, Sale is healthy. The Red Sox very much need him to stay healthy.
Given the woes of last year and the loss of Bogaerts, every major publication is likely to pick the Red Sox to finish last again in the loaded AL East. Perhaps the Sox can channel 2021 and write a different story than people are expecting.
“We know we're in for battle. Our job, I think, is to help every guy on our roster reach their top end,” Bloom said. “And I think if we do that, or if we come close to doing that, we're going to be in a really good position, but we can't really worry too much about where people have us projected. I don't blame people for having us projected wherever they have us projected. We weren't very good last year. So we’ve got to be better.”
Supervising Club Reporter Ian Browne has covered the Red Sox for MLB.com since 2002.