Craig Breslow is now in charge of baseball operations for the Red Sox, and he has that job for a variety of reasons. One, however, likely stands out above the rest.
Boston officially introduced Breslow as chief baseball officer Thursday, and he obviously has his hands full. The Sox are coming off consecutive last-place finishes and obviously have a lot of work to do in order to get back to contending for World Series championships.
The most likely and most important step the club has to take in order to reach that destination is to replenish and/or improve its starting pitching. The Red Sox ranked 22nd in Fangraphs wins above replacement from starting pitchers over the last two seasons, with only three clubs getting fewer innings from their starters. They ranked 26th in home runs allowed per nine innings over the same period of time.
Seventeen different pitchers made a start for the Red Sox in 2023. At the most important position in the sport, the Red Sox haven’t been good enough to contend.
That was a fact that neither Breslow nor president and CEO Sam Kennedy could deny Thursday at Fenway Park.
“It’s no secret that pitching — and specifically starting pitching — is an area of need in this organization,” Breslow admitted in his press conference. “It’s something we’ll kind of shift our focus to.”
Kennedy later added: “The Red Sox have not had a great track record with respect to drafting and developing pitching, but we know when we’ve been at our best and winning championships, we’ve excelled from starting pitching to the back end of the bullpen. (Breslow’s) experience in these areas as a player and as a front-office executive were incredibly appealing and one of the reasons why we identified him initially as a candidate.”
As Kennedy mentioned, Breslow’s unique background on the pitching side is his biggest selling point. He was an undersized professional baseball player who didn’t have the raw stuff you’ll find in major league bullpens. But the former 26th-round pick honed his craft and always looked to make adjustments. Those tweaks he made — big and small — helped him stick in the big leagues from 2005 until 2017.
Even more appealing and frankly more applicable, however, was Breslow’s experience with the Chicago Cubs. Theo Epstein hired him ahead of the 2019 season, and by the time Breslow left, he had been promoted to assistant general manager/vice president of pitching.
The process of improvement is ongoing for the North Siders, but there has been undeniable growth on the mound at all levels of the organization, and the future looks bright for the Cubs. Breslow on Thursday pulled back the curtain a little bit on how the Cubbies went about making those improvements during his time there.
“The blueprint there was (to) identity the current state. See how we fared relative to organizations that had reputations as being strong pitching development organizations, identify where those gaps were and figure out what we wanted the ideal future state to be and then figure out the roadmap to get us there,” Breslow explained.
The Cubs ultimately found their pitchers fell short in pure stuff and quality of pitches at the big league level. They identified the areas for improvement and hired coaches who could get them there.
In the process, Breslow stumbled on something he believes can be applied to not just developing pitching but every position on the diamond.
“Given the size of today’s (front) offices, given the ubiquity of information available, it’s really easy to get caught up trying to find the newest, rightest, the most current information,” he explained, “when it turns out that getting an organization directionally aligned behind something is far more powerful.”
That philosophy will be applied to all Breslow and his staff do moving forward, but how much it’s able to do for Red Sox pitchers present and future will go a long way in how Breslow’s tenure plays out.
