A rosy report on Bloom
Rays’ Neander says Chaim is ‘prepared to handle’ Sox’ post
It’s not easy to trust the Red Sox right now.
The decision making from top to bottom has been confusing since last fall, when principal owner John Henry fired Dave Dombrowski, waited weeks to answer questions about it and then finally said the two had differing visions for the Red Sox for almost a full year; in that time, Dombrowski kept making decisions with a short-term vision.
The Sox then flip-flopped too many times to count on their public messaging about getting under the luxury tax threshold ahead of the 2020 season.
They finally traded Mookie Betts after saying all the right things about keeping him during a slow off-season.
They made no major acquisitions other than to load up on fringe relief pitchers but still insist they’re trying to compete for a World Series title.
And now, new chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom is teaching interim manager Ron Roenicke and his coaching staff how the Red Sox should properly use the opener, a strategy perfected by Bloom’s former organization, the Tampa Bay Rays.
If there’s one person who trusts what the Red Sox are doing, it’s Bloom’s old boss, Rays general manager Erik Neander.
“He’s prepared to handle it,” Neander said of Bloom during the Rays’ visit to JetBlue Park earlier this spring. “He’s thorough. He’s prepared. Nothing is done haphazardly. He’s aware and in tune. He’s able to anticipate. When you do that, you put yourself in position to make what you believe are the best decisions possible.”
Bloom’s biggest decision was to trade Betts and David Price rather than find more creative ways to get under the threshold, though the messy situation he found himself in certainly wasn’t his fault.
“There’s been a lot this offseason, obviously,” Neander said. “But he’s as prepared as one could be to handle it, manage it and make what they believe are the best decisions for the club. You don’t make decisions like (trading
Betts) unless you truly believe they’re in the best interest of the organization.”
Added Neander, “He’s going to do a nice job.”
Neander and Bloom worked together for 13 years in Tampa, the last three of which Bloom spent as a senior vice president working directly with Neander on the organization’s most important decisions.
But now they’re contemporaries competing for the same division title. Neander is running a team that seems perpetually underrated and often exceeds expectations while Bloom is operating under the opposite circumstances.
Neander smiled and said he has no empathy for Bloom, who has taken some (although arguably not much) criticism from local media outlets and fans.
“Every environment, every situation has different stresses and different pressures,” Neander said. “These are pressures that come with inheriting — and being in a situation with the type of passionate fanbase that exists up there (in Boston). This is all part of it.
“I don’t feel for him. It’s the job. He’s well-equipped to handle it. He knows fullwell what’s going on and what it takes to handle it. I wish him the best, for sure.”
Bloom was to spend his Sunday teaching Roenicke how to utilize the opener.
Neander hardly remembers when the Rays first implemented the opener strategy and he wouldn’t say if it was Bloom’s idea.
“I don’t know if it traces back to a single idea at a single point in time,” Neander said. “We’ve had discussions about whether there are better ways to maximize the contributions of a pitching staff as long as I’ve been with the organization. And just each passing conversation led to a little bit more.
“We got to the point in our club where, you don’t do something like that without a collective support and consideration from a lot of different viewpoints, including your players. I can’t pinpoint it on any one individual person but a lot of us got to the point where we felt like it was the right thing to do with the players we had at the time.”
Now it’s Bloom’s chance to try again, this time on his own. And with a much larger audience watching closely.