Chaim Bloom Had The Chance To Dump Chris Sale's Massive Contract Last Year And Decided Not To. I Now Understand Why He Was Fired.
Oof. That’s a rough one. The Chaim Bloom era in Boston will go down as a fascinating one. Two years ago, this was a team that was only two wins away from making it to the World Series. People were enraged at how the Mookie Betts trade was handled, but I never really put that on Bloom. That was John Henry openly admitting that he didn’t want to pay one of the best players ever. Sometimes GMs are only as good as our owners, and owners are only as good as their GMs. We’ve seen that in baseball many times. But Red Sox fans were admittedly fed up by the lack of spending, and Chaim Bloom became the poster child for that. They’ve been average over the last two seasons, and I think ownership just got sick of it.
The story that came out yesterday is a rough look. The one thing I cannot blame Chaim Bloom for is how inflated the Red Sox budget became. Dave Dombrowski is the man. He’s one of the greatest general managers of all time, but that dude loves to spend, and he knows how to gut a farm system like a fish. Bloom didn’t inherit a bad situation, but he had some kinks that needed to be worked out. The possibility of trading the contract that Chris Sale had seemed a no-brainer. Until yesterday, I assumed no team was willing to take on that deal. Sale is still relatively effective when he pitches, but the issue is that the guy just doesn’t pitch anymore. Injuries have gotten in the way.
Chris Sale had a Hall of Fame peak, but he's lacked the durability that many great pitchers need to make it into Cooperstown. Had the Red Sox been able to dump Chris's sales contract, they might've found a way to resign Xander Bogaerts. I know that would've been a long shot. Bogaerts got a bloated deal from the San Diego Padres, but it is kind of depressing the Red Sox core that made them so successful in the late 2010s is all but gone at this point. Hell, even the team that made it to the ALCS two years ago doesn't resemble the team they have today.
Being the president of the Red Sox is a highly desirable job. I can't imagine many people will turn it down, but I feel like Red Sox fans have become so accustomed to success that they may be in for a rude awakening. They're in limbo right now. The AL East is loaded with really good teams like the Orioles and Rays that aren't going anywhere.
Boston's farm system is pretty average, and while they have some good hitters in their lineup, they need to do a better job of developing their pitching. And I don't know if we'll ever know what the return for Chris Sale would've been. It may not have been more than a salary dump, but even that's worth something. To be able to get rid of one of the bigger deals of the Dombrowski era may have hindered the Red Sox in the short term, but it would've been better for them in the long term. For the time being, they're stuck in baseball purgatory.