It has been quite a roller-coaster offseason for Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom.
A total of 14 players who featured for the Red Sox last year hit free agency in November, and the team has not re-signed a single such talent. At the least, Boston has been active in the ongoing free agency period, from bolstering its bullpen with the addition of Kenley Jansen to signing slugger Justin Turner to take hold of the designated hitter position.
The Red Sox are coming off of a 2022 season where they finished in last place in the American League East standings with a 78-84 record, and even amid the team’s hectic offseason, Bloom believes that Boston has what it takes to shock the baseball world later this year.
“People are gonna pick us where they’re gonna pick us,” Bloom said during a recent appearance on the New York Post’s ‘The Show' podcast. “We like our team, we recognize we’re not expecting anybody to pick us to go out there and steamroll anybody.
“But we have a lot of talent on the team, we have a club that should fit together a lot better than last year’s team did, and we have the ability to go out there, if we play well, if we throw strikes, if we grind at-bats, we have the ability to get to the postseason and that’s really what we’re focused on.”
Bloom also noted that while the Red Sox will have plenty of new faces for the upcoming season, he did not manage to sign all of his free agent targets.
“There were some players we pursued that, for various reasons, just ended up with other clubs,” Bloom said. “Maybe there was a little more of that this offseason than there usually is. But that’s not a-typical.
“I think that gets back to the visibility of operating here, especially in the way that the landscape of the industry — the media landscape — is now. … At the end of the day, you’re not going to sign 300 players, you may get linked to 300 players.”
A crucial 2023 campaign sure awaits the Red Sox.
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