Chaim Bloom's Time as Boston's Fall Guy Has Ended

The FanGraphs Newsletter, September 15, 2023 [READ IN BROWSER]( September 15, 2023 Imagine trading Mookie Betts. Chaim Bloom must have done that, must have considered all of the angles and potential outcomes of such a move, including the possibility that he would be saddled with it as his legacy — then sold principal owner John Henry on a vision of the Red Sox without the superstar right fielder in order to be hired as the team’s chief baseball officer in October 2019. That trade has not worked out well for the Red Sox, who have made the playoffs just once since winning the 2018 World Series, behaving more like a mid-market franchise than [the league’s third-most valuable one](. And while Bloom had put something of a stamp on the post-Betts roster, the rest of his vision will not be realized. On Thursday, the Red Sox [fired]( him, kicking off a search for new leadership of their baseball operations department for the fourth time since Theo Epstein departed for the Cubs in October 2011. Unlike predecessors Ben Cherington (2011–15) and Dave Dombrowski (2015–19), Bloom didn’t win a championship during his run to offset the team’s disappointing seasons. On his watch, the Red Sox went just 267–262 from the start of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season to the point of his dismissal, becoming more notable for their belt-tightening than for their on-field success. They made the playoffs only in 2021, when they went 92–70, finishing second in the AL East, then beating the Yankees in the Wild Card Game and the Rays in the Division Series before losing to the Astros in the ALCS. They finished last in the division in both 2020 (24–36) and ’22 (78–84) and fired Bloom while tied for fourth with the Yankees at 73–72, with just a 0.3% chance of making the playoffs. [Chaim Bloom's Time as Boston's Fall Guy Has Ended, by Jay Jaffe]( [When They Say He’s Got That Dawg in Him, This Is What They Mean]( Baseball traditionalists and modern statheads have more in common than they think, but they don't always speak the same language. | by Kiri Oler [Is Drew Smyly Finally Making Up Lost Ground?]( What looks a groundball pitcher and acts like a groundball pitcher, but isn't actually a groundball pitcher? Why, it's Drew Smyly, of course! | by Leo Morgenstern [A Meandering Examination of Fly Ball Pull Rate, Featuring Stars of the Game and Also Isaac Paredes]( Want to know why Paredes is mashing and Vlad Jr. isn't? You need to look to the pull side. | by Ben Clemens [The Second Coming of Kirby Yates]( "If you’ve read a book that you know, and three years later you get asked questions about that book, you understand the premise and what the book’s about, but there’s a lot of little details that you probably need to read the book again to figure out. So I think I’m in the process of reading that book again.” | by Michael Baumann [Sandy Alcantara's Injury Means a Rockier Road for the Marlins Rotation]( The Marlins have lost their workhorse at a crucial moment in the NL Wild Card race. | by Dan Szymborski [Michael Harris II Is at the Top of the World and the Bottom of the Lineup]( The second-year center fielder is making better contact than he did as a rookie, even if the results haven't come yet. | by Michael Baumann 🎧 [Effectively Wild Episode 2059: The Bloom is Off the Bloom]( [DOWNLOAD THE FANGRAPHS APP]( [FanGraphs & Effectively Wild Merch Is Now Available at BreakingT!]( [ORDER HERE]( [Why Chaim Bloom is out in Boston -- and who is to blame for Red Sox's failures]( by Kiley McDaniel, ESPN ($) [Weird & Wild: Phillies hitting, then wasting epic late-inning homers at historic pace]( by Jayson Stark, The Athletic ($) [Fifty years ago, the great Clemente made Hall of Fame history]( by Nathalie Alonso, MLB [Failing to deliver when it matters, something’s got to change for Blue Jays]( by Jeff Blair, Sportsnet [@fangraphs]( [FanGraphs]( [FanGraphs]( [RSS]( [FORWARD]( [SUBSCRIBE]( Copyright © 2023 FanGraphs Inc, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the FanGraphs Newsletter. Our mailing address is: FanGraphs Inc 1200 N Hartford St. Apt 312Arlington, Va 22201 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](