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Eddie Romero

Red Sox Front Office Notes

By Jeff Todd | October 29, 2019 at 11:54am CDT

The Red Sox introduced new chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom yesterday, with Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald and Julian McWilliams of the Boston Globe among those to cover the proceedings. With Brian O’Halloran rising to become GM, the top leadership is set. But how did the team settle on this arrangement and what does it mean for the rest of the baseball ops department?

President Sam Kennedy, chairman Tom Werner, and principal owner John Henry all addressed the matter, as did Bloom. The picture painted was of a hiring search that increasingly became a coronation.

While the Boston club started out looking at about twenty possible candidates to replace Dave Dombrowski, it recognized that many roads were leading to Bloom. It was a bit of a risk, Kennedy acknowledged, but the club focused on the key Rays executive even before sitting down with him.

There certainly was an interview process, with Bloom convincing the Red Sox of the merits of their intuitions. As Henry explains it, the team “felt he was the right candidate before we met with him” and left everyone with precisely that belief after a lengthy two-day process that involved a number of one-on-one meetings with key organization personnel.

Clearly, Bloom and upper management were on the same page — and not just on his general baseball acumen and lauded people skills. Both Kennedy and Bloom hit upon the same theme. The former says that Sox fans “want” and “deserve” a “sustainable baseball organization;” the latter cited a desire “to build as strong of an organization as possible in all aspects so that we can have sustained long-term success and compete for championships year in and year out.” While there’s no disputing the desirability of putting out a good product every year, Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports rightly points out that the concept of sustainability is en vogue leaguewide as something of a euphemism for profit-minded salary management. The Red Sox have not been shy about stating a desire to draw down their spending levels.

Bloom wasn’t brought in to sit atop the existing leadership so much as to integrate within and lead it. Henry said that his initial inclination to pursue a heavily experienced baseball ops manager began to shift as he watched the club’s four-person interim team operate. “I don’t think anybody thought we were going to be interviewing No. 2’s, or people that had not been at least a general manager,” said Henry. “But because they were so strong, we decided that we should have somebody who can compliment them and lead the department.”

The precise stucture is still being sorted. Brian O’Halloran has been elevated to the GM seat, so he’ll be Bloom’s number two. But the exact arrangement on the next tier isn’t clear. Raquel Ferreira, Eddie Romero, and Zack Scott joined O’Halloran in filling in bridging from Dombrowski to Bloom. They’ll all remain in key roles, though at least one could still be on the move, as Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com reports. That’s not due to any known acrimony, but a hiring opportunity. Henry did not specify which person was actively under consideration elsewhere, but did make clear one of those three is interviewing for a position with another club.

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AL Notes: Adell, Etch, Mookie

By Dylan A. Chase | October 7, 2019 at 11:11am CDT

A quick word of update on Angels outfielder Jo Adell, who has been turning heads in the Arizona Fall League–which isn’t to say that eyes weren’t already trained on him to begin with. After a 2019 season that saw Adell hit .289/.359/.475 with ten home runs across three levels and 341 plate appearances, the Kentucky native entered AFL play last month as MLB Pipeline’s 5th-ranked prospect in the game. As Kyle Glaser of Baseball America points out this morning, Adell is bolstering that pedigree with his most recent performance for the Mesa Solar Sox (link).

The 20-year-old Adell, who was selected 10th overall by Los Angeles in the 2017 draft, went 7-for-17 in AFL play last week with a home run and a balanced 5-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Adell reached as high as Triple-A in the Los Angeles system in 2019, although the team may want to see him improve upon the production he posted there in a small sample of 130+ plate appearances (to say nothing of the potential service time considerations involving a prospective star such as Adell). With outfielder Kole Calhoun a possibility to move on in free agency, there does figure, at least, to be some MLB opportunity for the youngster in 2020 when GM Billy Eppler deems him ready.

More from around the AL this Monday morning…

  • A sad note of remembrance in recognition of the passing of Orioles organizational fixture Andy Etchebarren, who died this weekend at age 76. Etchebarren, an All-Star in his rookie season of 1966, was an important part of Baltimore’s mid-century dynasty. Perhaps most notably, the backstop helped catch, along with Elrod Hendricks, the Orioles’ four 20-game winners of 1971; it’s probably not un-noteworthy that the man known as “Etch” was also the last man to ever record an at-bat against Dodgers legend Sandy Koufax. After his playing career, as noted in a post from MASN’s Roch Kubatko (link), Etchebarren carved out a nice career for himself as a coach in the Baltimore pipeline, including stints as manager of the club’s Triple-A and Double-A affiliates, and time spent as the bench coach for former manager Davey Johnson.
  • The site has already thoroughly explored the ongoing contract outlook for Red Sox superstar Mookie Betts. To recap, the club’s forthcoming CBT trapeze act, Betts’ impending arbitrational raise, and the player’s apparent ambivalence to signing an extension with the team have all coalesced to the point where the near-unthinkable–a trade involving the near-peerless Betts–may be a consideration this offseason. One factor that won’t figure into Betts status for 2020? Organizational tension. As noted in a piece from Chris Cotillo of Masslive.com, the four executives* in charge of Sox operations in the wake of the Dave Dombrowski firing–including assistant GM Eddie Romero–are not holding Betts’ businesslike approach to negotiation against him (link). “I think he’s doing what’s in the best interest of Mookie and I think that’s what athletes should do,” Romero told Cotillo. “Every situation of these is case-by-case. Mookie has been the one who has sacrificed his body and has put in the work. He has the right to decide what he wants to do.” In addition to Romero, team president Sam Kennedy and chairman Tom Werner both comment in Cotillo’s piece on their faith in Betts as both a person and a player, and Romero goes as far as to say that the player has “earned” the right to hit free agency. While this dialogue could just be seen as an encouraging bit of rationality in the front office realm, it is fair to wonder, for those reading tea leaves, whether such a congenial atmosphere could be foreshadowing to an amicable parting of ways between player and team.

*An earlier version of this post mistakenly referred to “four men” running the baseball operations department, when in fact the group of four executives is made up of one woman (Raquel Ferreira) and three men (Eddie Romero, Zack Scott, and Brian O’Halloran). We regret the error.

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Front Office Notes: Epstein, Red Sox, Orioles

By Dylan A. Chase | September 21, 2019 at 6:20pm CDT

With recently returned Cubs closer Craig Kimbrel having issued another ninth-inning meltdown today–against the NL Central-leading Cardinals, no less–Chicago fans may feel disinclined to read today’s piece from Chicago Sun-Times scribe Gordon Wittenmeyer, which doesn’t pull any punches in evaluating the job done by team president Theo Epstein and his staff this year. In Wittenmeyer’s view, blame for the Cubs 2019 underachievement should be directed at ownership and Epstein’s front office–not underperforming players or maligned manager Joe Maddon. Wittenmeyer writes: “What’s clear is that the onus of this season’s shortcomings falls on the shoulders of Theo Epstein’s front office for free agency and player development failings and Ricketts ownership for failure to exercise the market advantage of franchise-record revenues to increase spending during a seize-the-moment competitive window.”

Wittenmeyer leaves little earth unscorched in this column, citing the club’s inability to develop impact pitching, unwillingness to spend beyond ownership-established thresholds, and in-house pressure regarding the need for early-season “urgency” as factors that dragged down this year’s Cubbies. The Cubs dropped today’s 9-8 decision to St. Louis and now fall to 6.0 games back in the NL Central race.

More notes concerning FO leaders and PD staffers from around the game…

  • When Dave Dombrowski was relieved of his post by the Red Sox on Sept. 8, many cited the club’s thinned-out farm system as a potential impetus for the leadership change. For those interested in investigating that theory first-hand, Alex Speier of The Boston Globe took the time to explore Dombrowski’s effect on the Boston farm in a subscriber-only piece today (link). Recent farm system rankings from Fangraphs and Baseball America have placed Boston’s system as 30th and 22nd in the game, respectively.
    In more Sox-related news, Jen McCaffery of The Athletic spoke with Red Sox assistant GM Eddie Romero regarding the organization’s decision to retain front office staffer Tony La Russa in the wake of Dombrowski’s ousting (link). La Russa’s title under Dombrowski had been “Special Assistant and Vice President of Baseball Operations”, but the club is in the process of how the club can augment the baseball legend’s role moving forward: “We think it will evolve into a lot more overall staff development, not just major league-focused,” Romero told McCaffery. “But those are things we’re still talking about and we’re excited with the prospect of Tony continuing to bring his vast experience and knowledge.” 
  • Former big leaguer B.J. Surhoff was one casualty of Orioles GM Mike Elias’ midsummer front office shakeup, and Surhoff, for one, does not appreciate the way Elias handled his dismissal. In a candid interview with Dan Connolly of The Athletic, Surhoff claims that he was relieved of his duties as special assignment instructor after only having spoken with Elias on one other occasion–the day Elias was introduced as O’s GM back in November. “Am I pissed? Yeah. I’m unhappy about what happened,” Surhoff told Connolly. “Do I have sour grapes toward the organization? Well, I don’t like the way things are being handled. I just don’t like how they’re treating people. I want that to be known.” Surhoff stressed to Connolly that he could not speak for the other 30-plus employees who were issued non-renewals by Elias this summer. One of those non-renewals, longtime Baltimore scout Dean Albany, has been hired as a special assignment scout by the Phillies organization after spending 20 years in the Orioles org, per a separate tweet from Connolly (link).

 

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Latest On Red Sox’s, Diamondbacks’ Front Offices

By Connor Byrne | October 16, 2016 at 5:30pm CDT

The Diamondbacks worked quickly in their hiring of new executive vice president and general manager Mike Hazen, details Alex Speier of the Boston Globe.

Once it decided to move on from ex-GM Dave Stewart at the end of the regular season, Arizona reached out to Boston for permission to speak with Hazen, who served under president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski as the Red Sox’s GM. The BoSox didn’t allow Hazen to interview until after the Indians knocked them out of the ALDS last Monday. Hazen then met with the Diamondbacks on Friday and agreed to become the head of their baseball department Sunday morning.

In response to Hazen’s departure, Dombrowski released a congratulatory statement in which he revealed that “a search for a new general manager for the Boston Red Sox is underway.”

Reports already have senior vice president of baseball operations Frank Wren and pro scouting director Gus Quattlebaum as potential in-house successors to Hazen. If the Red Sox do want to promote Wren, it’s not a guarantee he’ll accept. Rob Bradford of WEEI notes that Wren – formerly the Braves’ GM – still lives in Atlanta, making it unclear if he’d be willing to move to Boston for a bigger role.

Other than Wren, Speier lists assistant GM Brian O’Halloran, VP of amateur and international scouting Amiel Sawdaye, senior VP Allard Baird and VP of international scouting Eddie Romero as other GM possibilities currently with the Red Sox. Speier also points out that Dombrowski interviewed Astros director of player development Quinton McCracken for the team’s GM job before he hired Hazen in 2015. The only member of the group with GM experience is Baird, who held that position with the Royals from 2000-06.

Of course, Hazen could lure certain front office members away from Boston to work with him and Tony La Russa in Arizona. La Russa is now an advisor, no longer the Diamondbacks’ chief baseball officer, but Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reports (on Twitter) that the longtime manager still has power within the organization. La Russa seemingly had a hand in the hiring of Hazen, having sat in with owner Ken Kendrick during their interviews with GM candidates.

Hazen doesn’t intend to raid the Red Sox of their personnel, according to Speier, though Bradford writes that O’Halloran, Quattlebaum and Sawdaye are candidates to take jobs with the Diamondbacks.

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