The Red Sox offered “the smartest man in baseball” the top job, and he accepted.
A source echoed Alex Speier’s and Michael Silverman’s report in the Boston Globe on Tuesday evening: the club offered Craig Breslow the job as head of baseball operations and he accepted.
Breslow had two stints with the Red Sox during his 11-year Major League career. He was instrumental to the 2013 championship, anchoring the bullpen with a career-best 1.81 ERA over 61 regular-season appearances. He made 10 relief appearances during that year’s postseason, including nine scoreless outings (eight consecutively).
In his post-playing career, the 43-year-old found a different way to impact a franchise’s pitching; as the Cubs’ assistant general manager and vice president of pitching, he’s transformed their farm system into a well-oiled arms development machine.
Breslow is widely respected in the baseball world. Sources within and outside of the Red Sox organization described him as brilliant and an “incredibly decent human being.” For the Red Sox, who seek new leadership but want much of their internal structure to stay the same, he seems to make the most sense. He and Alex Cora were teammates in Boston in 2006-07, and many of the other executives have been with the organization since before he signed his minor-league contract with the team on February 1, 2006.
His New England roots run deep, too. A New Haven, Conn. native, Breslow was a star pitcher at Yale (and the Bulldogs’ team captain) before embarking upon his professional career. Though employed by the Chicago Cubs since 2019, he lives in Newton, Mass. and often works remotely.
