Sox talk good hiring game
Baseball ops job dominates session
The Red Sox held their end-of-season press conference Monday at Fenway Park. Manager Alex Cora sat alongside team president/CEO Sam Kennedy, outlining an offseason that will include finding a new head of baseball operations and determining how the team will move forward after another losing season and lastplace finish in the American League East. Here are some key points:
R A new baseball boss
The search to replace chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom has begun, according to Kennedy. The Sox hired Bloom toward the latter part of October four years ago; they had fired Dave Dombrowski in early September. Kennedy indicated that this search will likely take longer.
“I want to make sure everyone understands that this is going to be a much different process than the last time we had a change in leadership,” Kennedy said. “And what I mean by that is, we plan to take our time, we plan to be very deliberate.”
One internal candidate is assistant general manager Eddie Romero. Kennedy said the club could hire more than one person.
“We’re going to have a consistent, robust process that hopefully leads us to the right person, or people,” Kennedy said. “We’ve been under way since announcing the change and we don’t have any set deadline or time frame. We’ll have an announcement when it’s appropriate.”
The Red Sox haven’t held any formal interviews. Those will begin either this week or early next week.
“We’re looking for someone who shares the organizational values that I think we’ve come to be known for in our time here,” Kennedy said. “At the end of the day, that’s understanding that the standards here are incredibly high. Putting ourselves in a position to be busy in October is the goal.
“That said, we think that you can also build a sustainable organization at the minor league level.”
R Alex Cora’s role
Normally, an incoming general manager/president of baseball ops has full autonomy to choose the manager. The Mets, for example, fired Buck Showalter Sunday because the incoming head of baseball operations, David Stearns, wants his own manager. Owner Steve Cohen said he respected that.
Yet as it pertains to the Red Sox, Cora, who has one year left on his deal, said Sunday that he will be a part of the process in finding the person to replace Bloom. That could cause some trepidation for external candidates.
Despite that, Kennedy said the next Red Sox leader will be the lead decision maker on all baseball operations, putting their stamp on the club.
“I think they absolutely can,” Kennedy said. “That’s important. You have to have the person in position, or people in positional leadership, with the ability to make decisions.”
Kennedy is relying on the brand of the Red Sox and is confident that — despite the instability in the front office, with leaders seemingly on four-year deals, and the club’s lack of success — the Sox will have a large pool to choose from.
“This is the Boston Red Sox,” Kennedy said. “If you want to run a baseball organization, this is where you want to be. You want to be in Boston. Why? Because it matters here more than anywhere else. So if you’re not up for that challenge, thanks but no thanks.”
R Willingness to spend
The competitive balance tax threshold was set at $233 million this season. When the Sox hired Bloom, one of the missions was to get below the CBT. Bloom, in fact, did that, with the Sox ranking 13th in payroll this season at just over $181 million. Under the new regime, will the Sox be willing to spend?
Kennedy didn’t quite answer the question, but had this to offer:
“We’ve had years where we’ve been over the CBT threshold. We’ve had years where we’ve been under. The resources have been there. Where we have fallen short sometimes is in the allocation of those resources, and that’s on us to fix. But the resources for us to spend have been there since 2002.”
R Ticket prices
The Red Sox once again will raise ticket prices at Fenway Park.
“We’ve had a very modest and low-single-digit increase on seasonticket prices,” Kennedy said.
General admission tickets will fluctuate based on the market.
R Attendance
Regular-season attendance across baseball was up 9.6 percent, per Major League Baseball. Seventeen clubs eclipsed the 2.5 million mark, matching an all-time high (2000). Eight teams surpassed the 3 million figure. The Red Sox, however, saw just a slight uptick.
Their overall attendance was at 2,672,130, compared with last year’s 2,625,089. Kennedy saw it as a win.
“We actually are incredibly appreciative of the fan support that we have this year,” Kennedy said. “Our attendance was slightly up, which is somewhat remarkable if you consider coming off of a last-place finish in 2022, and obviously, we know where we are in 2023.” R On-field staff
The on-field staff should be due for a change, but Cora made it seem as though all of his coaches would be back. The Sox struggled tremendously this season defensively, committing the second-most errors in baseball (102) while also tying for 24th in the majors in defensive runs saved (minus-17).
“We have to find ways to improve our players,” said Cora, who met with his coaching staff Monday.
R Rafael Devers
Devers’s overall numbers — .271/ .351/.500 with 33 homers and an .851 OPS — were in line with his career stats. But he regressed defensively, ranking second-to-last in defensive runs saved among third basemen (minus-9), while committing the most errors (19).
“There’s some habits that he has that are bad ones going to his left,” Cora said. “To his right, he’s really good. Moving forward, he’s OK. We got to work on a few things and he’s willing to do it.”