More Red Sox Drama: A Yahoo Report Detailed The Dysfunction In Boston's Front Office While Craig Breslow Spoke To The Media And Explained That The Raffy Devers Trade Will Be Addition By Subtraction

To no surprise, the Rafael Devers-Red Sox divorce has turned into a giant "he said-she said" spat. It's honestly confusing to keep up with every new tidbit that comes out from either side. Yesterday not only did we get Joon Lee's Yahoo piece, but we heard from Craig Breslow and Sam Kennedy as well as some of the players in that clubhouse. It's a clusterfuck to sift through and decide who is telling the truth and who is talking out of their ass. 

We'll start with the Yahoo piece, which you can read here. The basis of this article was to highlight the dysfunction that resides in the Red Sox organization, mainly its front office. 

Breslow has grown increasingly insulated. Multiple sources within the organization describe a front office losing cohesion. Staffers who helped build four championship teams — veterans of the Theo Epstein, Ben Cherington, Dave Dombrowski and Bloom regimes — now feel shut out of the operation. The collaborative spirit that once defined Red Sox baseball operations has frayed.

Cora and Breslow do not see eye to eye with their vision of the team. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Cora has urgency to win right now. The team has made the playoffs one time since winning the World Series in 2018. They've found themselves in the cellar of the AL East three times during that stretch. Breslow doesn't appear to be in much of rush, focused more on setting the team up for the future. As much as I hate them, the fans deserve better. 

Breslow was tabbed as the replacement for Chaim Bloom because he played the game and could ideally relate better to the players instead of some nerd who saw everything as a number. Doesn't appear that's the case.  

Now you can read that and come to the conclusion that if you're caught talking behind your boss's back and calling him a "fucking stiff" it's not gonna go well for you. A firing seems a smidge extreme especially for someone who has been there way longer than you, but you also just can't be caught saying that. Either way, you get the vibe that hate working with Craig Breslow and his robotic tendencies. 

The article also details a disconnect between the coaching staff and front office, as players are now called up in need of learning basic baseball skills. Fundamentals have been cast aside and as a result you get defensive disasters like Kristian Campbell at second base. Roman Anthony's blunder in his MLB debut was highlighted with how they addressed it the next day before their game. 

Another error came during Roman Anthony’s debut, when he misplayed a ball in right field. The next day, Anthony was sent out to run outfield drills in front of the media. Multiple people in the organization noted that under previous regimes, that kind of instruction would’ve taken place behind closed doors. This time, it felt like a message from the coaching staff to the front office. One team source described the message as deliberate: “This is what we still have to teach, at the big-league level.”

And as an example of the organization trying to fry Devers on his way out, they dropped this nugget about how he was ticked off that the rookie Campbell offered to play first to help fix the team's problem when Devers refused. 

According to multiple sources, Devers was also upset when the rookie Campbell volunteered to play first base this season — interpreting it as a slight to his own stature.

Seems beyond silly that Devers would be bothered by that, but who knows? Cora had said Campbell was set to play first in the Atlanta series, but it never happened. Abraham Toro and Romy Gonzalez did take off as solutions which pushed away the need for Campbell to step up. Was the Campbell first base stuff not a real thing, but more a further attempt to make Devers look bad? If Devers was actually this kind of cancer and potentially harming the young crop of players who had just come up, then yeah he had to go. Still, it's so hard to tell if this is or isn't just blatant bullshit planted by the front office to make it seem like they had to send him off. 

Now let's talk about Breslow and Kennedy's media session last night before Boston's game against Seattle. The Red Sox GM made it clear through his comments that he believes this is an addition by subtraction situation. Bold thing to say as you remove the best hitter on the team for a bucket of balls. 

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He talked about the deal itself and confused the fuck out of everyone listening. 

I still don't know what he was trying to say there. I do, however, think it's abundantly clear that the Sox were looking to dump Devers' full salary on someone else and whoever agreed to do that first, ideally an NL team, would have him. That's why they didn't shop him to the whole league. They didn't really care about the compensation, even if they're telling you they got back what they wanted. 

"If we didn't get the return that we were holding out for, we wouldn't have made the move"

Getting rid of the money is the John Henry special though. It's the same reason in the Mookie Betts deal they only got back Verdugo, Wong, and Downs. They insisted on attaching David Price's remaining contract to the deal and begged the Dodgers to take Betts as compensation. Safe to say we can look back and assess that was a terrible decision. Good to see them not learning from their own terrible mistakes. For an owner with tons of money and assets, it's as gutless of a move as you can conjure up. 

Breslow was asked to look back at this whole process and assess if he'd do anything differently. This asshole wouldn't give in. 

It's possible he doesn't want to admit he's a clown to the general public, but if he actually thinks he handled all of this appropriately he's legit clueless and should be out of a job yesterday. Did Devers refuse to be a team player and cooperate for the sake of the situation? Yes, but Breslow's lack of communication with Raffy was detrimental to how this all unfolded from the jump. They told him they weren't signing Bregman and then if they did he wasn't going to be bothered at 3rd anyways. They said this publicly! 

(Newsweek) "Raffy Devers is our third baseman," Cora told NESN's Tom Caron. "Alex was a Gold Glover at third base and we all know that. In 2017, I had a conversation with him. He needed to play third because it was (Carlos) Correa and (Jose) Altuve. I always envisioned Alex as a Gold Glove second baseman.

"His size, the way he moves -- it felt kind of like, 'You will be a second baseman.' But he has played third base at a high level, so we'll see where he ends up."

That either shows they were true assholes to Devers or that Cora and Breslow weren't on the same page at all. Either way you slice it, it's bad. 

Once Devers lost his position he was told he wouldn't be asked to play the field the rest of the year. Then Casas went down and they asked if he could play first. Again, Devers could have easily gave it a shot, failed, and gone back to DH. He wanted no part of it. Despite the $300M contract and being the face of the franchise, he had no interest in doing whatever it took to help the team. This was the ol' everyone's wrong kind of debacle. 

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To me it feels like the Sox GM was looking for a reason to trade that contract and get it off his books since he wasn't the one who gave it to Devers in the first place. And sure if the relationship was truly unfixable then yeah trade him, but do it in the offseason. Thing had relatively calmed down between Devers and the front office. You found your first base options and the team was finally winning. Why light the bomb now? Just wait and shop him to every team in the league. Get a legit haul for him during the winter meetings. Don't just give him away for nothing in the middle of the year right after you spark your season and gain serious momentum. The timing is my biggest issue with all of this. 

It doesn't seem like the players were that bothered by the trade. Maybe that does speak more to the need to get him off the roster ASAP. 

But then you hear Trevor Story say this and think the opposite. Also how did Breslow not address the team? That speaks more to his flaw of being a robot and not personable or approachable in any way. 

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To recap, my shot in the dark assessment here is that Breslow hated the idea of Devers' contract clogging up payroll. Anytime you suggest cutting money to John Henry he's gonna give you full approval to do so, especially when his precious Liverpool football club coughs up a lot of money for a new player at the same time. On one side you're hearing about the disconnect between the front office and the team and on the other you're being fed how the Devers relationship was broken beyond repair and had to be taken care of immediately. Devers was far from a great teammate/leader and did not take on added responsibility once he received the big extension. He just wanted to be left alone at 3rd base and mash. Some guys don't want to lead and he's one of them. Doesn't mean he isn't extremely valuable, just look at the dude's stats. You're talking about one of the best left handed hitters in the game. And now he's on the San Francisco Giants, an already sneaky good team in the NL West before this deal. 

What a gift for them and it all it took was to agree to pay him all his money. The Giants have been trying to land a big fish on the market for years and it just plopped up on their lap. The Red Sox won their first game in the post-Devers era 2-0 last night in Seattle behind very good pitching. Roman Anthony slugged the first homer of his career off of Logan Gilbert. Maybe Devers was a true cancer and him out of the building will only lead to great things like Breslow says. I like to believe Breslow will be out of a job shortly for a number of reasons that were highlighted above. As Nico Harrison said after the Luka Trade, "time will tell if I'm right."

P.S. On theme with the story, that was probably the most disjointed blog I've ever written. There's just no way to pull together all of this in a clear and concise manner. Apologies, but don't blame me, blame the Red Sox.  

P.P.S. Thornton and I finished out blogs on this at the same time, make sure to go read his once it's up so you can read the Red Sox fan angle.