After finding a way to somehow remain competitive for much of the 2023 campaign, the Boston Red Sox are crawling to the finish line with just over two weeks left in the season. It's clear that Boston's small playoff hopes have gone flying out the door, and as the result of another lost season, the Red Sox opted to fire their President of Baseball Operations in Chaim Bloom on Thursday afternoon.

From the moment he took over for Dave Dombrowski, Bloom's tenure with Boston was rocky. He immediately traded away fan favorite Mookie Betts, and made a number of head-scratching moves that often left fans confused with his gameplan. Years of indecision and poor moves eventually came back to haunt Bloom, and he was rightfully fired on Thursday.

There are fans complaining over the situation Bloom found himself in with the Red Sox ownership group, and truth be told, they have a point there. But at the end of the day, Bloom dug his own grave on a handful of occasions, and while he got the short end of the stick, it's clear that he was not the right guy to turn Boston into a World Series contender.

Why Chaim Bloom deserved to get fired by the Red Sox

As previously noted, Bloom was dealt a tough hand with the Red Sox. He was pretty much asked to destroy the 2018 World Series squad for salary cap purposes, while keeping the team competitive at the major league level, and rebuilding their farm system. All of those things cannot be accomplished at the same time, which Boston found out the hard way over the past few years.

Aside from their surprise run to the 2021 ALCS, the Red Sox were largely uncompetitive during Bloom's time in charge. The 2020 pandemic shortened season was a mess from the start thanks to the Alex Cora suspension drama, and that can't really be held against Bloom, but the results have not added up over the past few years.

While he couldn't keep Boston competitive, Bloom excelled at cutting salary and building up the Red Sox farm system. The Red Sox have a manageable cap situation after trading Betts and letting Xander Bogaerts walk in free agency, and their farm system, led by top prospect Marcelo Mayer, is in much better shape than it was just a few years ago.

But in terms of the team that actually matters at the majors, Chaim Bloom has often proven to have no idea of what he's doing. He was surely pressured into trading Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers, but that deal has proven to be a resounding loss for Boston. If they kept Betts in town, they probably could have won another championship in 2021.

Bloom stripped down that 2018 World Series squad, but he never figured out how to build it back up. He appeared content to make moves around the margins that temporarily filled in gaps, rather than adding a long-term solution. A simple look at the 2023 roster shows how flawed Bloom's roster-building strategy is.

Sure, Bloom hit on low-level free agent additions in Adam Duvall, Justin Turner, and Kenley Jansen, but what good does that do for the Red Sox in the future? All these guys are already at least 35 years old, and while they are having great seasons now, that doesn't mean the same thing will happen next year. Father time waits for no one, and regression will hit them all at some point.

For the most part, the checkbook has been opened for Bloom to bring in big name players over the past year or so. He didn't make such a move this past offseason, with his biggest signing being Masataka Yoshida, who has admittedly been a solid addition. But Bloom's biggest free agent signing, which was Trevor Story, has been awful so far. Bogaerts hasn't panned out with the San Diego Padres, but handing him a similar deal as the one Story got would have been a far better move to make.

Given how Boston's fairly average roster has managed to put together a 74-74 record to this point, it's clear that they can be contenders in the near future. To this point, Bloom had shown nothing that suggested he was capable of being the guy who could construct the roster to lead Boston back to the World Series. So, he was fired, and someone who can do that will be brought in.

Bloom never really got a mandate that he had to build this team up this season or else he would get fired, but he seemed to be blissfully unaware of the narrative surrounding his tenure with the team. Bloom never was able to shift out of the small-market mentality that came with working for the Tampa Bay Rays, and that ultimately was his downfall in Boston.

The Red Sox need a guy who can turn this roster, which has a lot of solid pieces, into a true championship contender. Bloom proved time and again that he wasn't that guy, and while he deserves a bit of credit due to the situation he found himself in, the MLB is a results-based industry. Chaim Bloom never got the results needed at the major league level, and he sealed his own fate this season, no matter what the circumstances surrounding the campaign have been.