Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow makes an appearance at WooSox Foundation Gala, talks about the Winter Meetings
Red Sox new chief baseball officer Craig Breslow made an appearance at Polar Park for the WooSox Foundation Honors Gala on Saturday night.
“I can speak from a lot of experience, arguably too much experience in Triple-A, but (it is) a beautiful set-up, beautiful stadium, seems like it’s infused life into the area, and I can see why players speak so highly of the experience here,” Breslow said to reporters, including Tommy Cassell of the Worcester Telegram Gazette. “This is a first-class operation here and it makes me want to see if I could put the uniform back on.”
The Connecticut native pitched for the Red Sox in 2006 and again from 2012-2015, will now be charged with building a new contender, even though he’s been on the job for a short period of time.
“I’ve been on the job for 30 or 31 days, so I’ve got essentially a month’s worth of interactions,” Breslow said. “So still, plenty for me to learn and I certainly can see the things that I think we do remarkably well and also some areas that deserve some attention.”
Breslow remains dialed into the pitching market. The former lefty will be working with his player development team on building a strong pitching infrastructure all across the organization.
“As we think about what the keys to sustainable success will be, without question it will be building out a development pipeline that can feed our major league team with respect to pitching year over year,” said Breslow. “In the meantime, we have to figure out a way to put together as competitive of a rotation as we possibly can.”
Boston struggled last season, finishing in the AL East basement (78-84) for the second straight season. The Red Sox starters struggled to accumulate innings, no starter won more than 12 games or had an ERA lower than 4.
Last season, the Red Sox ranked 21st in team ERA (4.52), 24th in opponent batting average (.256) and gave up 208 homers as a staff (24th in the league). Those numbers are part of the reason the club moved on from pitching coach Dave Bush at the conclusion of the regular season.
The Red Sox hired Andrew Bailey to be the team’ new pitching coach. Bailey has a strong track record of success with the Giants. His staff ranked sixth in baseball with a 3.80 ERA and allowed the fewest homers (525) from 2020 to 2023. San Francisco also allowed the fewest walks in the majors with 403. Those numbers reflect Bailey’s philosophy of “strikes are everything.”
“I don’t think it’s a secret that starting pitching and infield defense, in particular, have been areas of focus,” Breslow said. “When I stepped into the organization, multiple people were aware of that and it’s something that we’ll address, and I think we can address it with a combination of internal and external options.”
The Winter Meetings will begin in Nashville on Sunday, Breslow hinted to reporters at the WooSox Gala that he trade/free agent landscape is becoming clearer.
“(We’re) trying to identify starting pitching that will be a fit and can help us improve both the short-term and long-term outlook,” Breslow said.
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