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Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer, Craig Breslow, joins the show!
WEEI-FM / WEEI
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9/12/2024
Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer, Craig Breslow, joins the show! Tyler O'Neill signing?
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00:00
Good morning, Craig Resolow.
00:02
Good morning. How are you guys doing?
00:04
Great. How are you?
00:07
I'm good. You know, it's as much as I tell myself that it's not wise to kind of live and die with
00:13
every game. Last night was a good one. Last night was fun.
00:16
Yeah. I mean, nothing better than the walk-off and this team is hanging around and still in it.
00:25
And so, a quick question about when it comes to the subject of Tyler O'Neal,
00:32
that guy is on a one-year deal here. I'm assuming that's somebody that you guys will
00:37
look to talk to postseason and would like to see stay around here.
00:44
Yeah, you know, we'll obviously start to engage in those conversations, but I think we've all
00:52
acknowledged that right-handed power plays really well at Fenway Park, and he's been
00:56
a great fit. He's been a really productive hitter when he's been able to stay on the field. And,
01:04
you know, I think we're seeing that right now. He's been on quite a hot streak,
01:07
and he has the ability to carry this team and change games with a single swing.
01:11
Craig, when you look at where you are right now, 16 games left in the season,
01:15
you're four games out of that third wild-card spot. I understand you were able to win one last
01:23
night with a walk-off, but what's the morale like in that clubhouse with the players, with Alex
01:28
Corr? What's the message that you guys are pushing kind of with this last little stretch?
01:35
Yeah, you know, I think Alex all season has done a great job of keeping the group focused on the
01:42
field and, you know, ignoring the noise, the adversity, the injuries. I think that's one of
01:48
the benefits in a lot of ways of a young team. You know, guys that kind of show up every day
01:53
don't really know any better, and, you know, I think Alex's message has been these games matter,
01:57
right? Let's, you know, let's try to play our best baseball. Let's keep winning games, and
02:02
we can't control what happens around us, but, you know, we've got a chance to make this
02:07
interesting, and we're going to do that by continuing to play good baseball.
02:10
Craig, in the same breath of talking about Tyler O'Neill, the future of Nick Pavetta
02:14
seems up in the air with him and the Red Sox. What do you hope to see out of him,
02:18
because he has come up big for you guys this season?
02:22
Yeah, he's been a really effective pitcher in this league for a long time, someone that I have
02:28
a tremendous amount of respect for and someone that I think he has talked about, you know,
02:32
he's talked about how much he's enjoyed his time here. So, you know, another guy that we're
02:37
obviously going to have conversations around, and, you know, he's got a bit of a unique profile
02:42
in the rotation as it's currently constituted because he's got so much swing and miss to his
02:47
game, which we saw last night and we've seen time and time again can, you know, is the most
02:52
effective way to get out, you know, his ability to generate swing and misses with his fastball
02:56
and his breaking ball is something that we really, really value, and he's been a really
03:01
good starter for us all season. We love Liam Hendricks on this show,
03:06
and I know he had some soreness after the rehab starter, or I guess the two starts in Worcester,
03:13
and Alex Cora said the other day that it's getting close to time to make the decision
03:21
that he won't pitch for the Sox this season, as he had hoped. A little bit about what you've
03:28
seen from him as he's tried to come back from that surgery.
03:32
Yeah, so super competitive, outspoken, great personality, really a great guy to have around
03:40
the clubhouse and have around the team, and, you know, he was adamant that he wanted to get back
03:48
in 2025 and felt like he could kind of push the timeline, and in a lot of ways he's done so. He
03:54
didn't recover quite as well as I think he would have hoped and the medical staff would have hoped
03:59
coming out of a couple of those games, so we just wanted to press pause and catch our breath a
04:03
little bit. You know, the good news is that there's no structural issues with the elbow,
04:10
with the graft. We just want to make sure that we're balancing being responsible and thinking
04:15
a bit about the longer term with the potential for him to impact our team in 2025. So, you know,
04:21
I think we'll continue to monitor that, check in with him, check in with the medical staff,
04:25
and make a determination as to, you know, kind of what's best for him.
04:28
Craig, why do these teams led by Cora have good first halves and then every year have a massive
04:36
swoon following the All-Star break or the deadline? Why does this keep happening? You were
04:42
11 games over 500, now you're back down to two. You've been back down around 500. What is the
04:48
common thread? Yeah, I think it's a fair question. It's one we need to answer, though. I
04:55
don't think that this is an Alex Cora thing. I think this is, you know, something that requires
04:59
us to look at the composition of the roster, to look at the workloads, to make sure that I and
05:07
we in the office are, you know, bringing in enough depth that we can weather injuries, bumps, and
05:13
bruises, that we're still pushing development so that guys are better in the second half than they
05:17
are in the first. And those are all the questions that we need to be asking. I think, you know,
05:22
one good example here would be pitching, right? You know, where we came out of the gates pitching
05:27
really, really well, largely built on the back of heavy spin usage, heavy secondary usage and
05:33
avoiding fastballs. And then there was a period of time where, you know, it seemed pretty obvious
05:39
that the league had adjusted, that our mistakes in the zone were getting hit, particularly our
05:44
breaking balls. And maybe we, you know, we didn't adjust as quickly as we should have. That's,
05:48
you know, that's something as an organization we have to make sure we're staying on top of,
05:51
is identifying these trends and trying to be a little bit more proactive. But those are questions
05:56
that we are asking of ourselves and will continue to ask. You know, at the end of the day, though,
06:03
I would just, you know, reiterate that, like, I don't think that's an Alex Cora thing. I think
06:07
that the responsibility falls on all of us. Would you say then was it on you for not doing
06:11
more at the deadline? I mean, you know, I suppose in some ways, the answer to that could be yes,
06:21
it's impossible to forecast, you know, what the performance or health will be of, you know,
06:28
of guys that you bring in. But, you know, at the time, given the information that we had,
06:33
we executed what, you know, what we thought was a successful deadline in terms of wanting to add to
06:37
the bullpen, wanting to add to the rotation, wanting to add a right-handed bat. You know,
06:41
obviously, unfortunately, three quarters of that group, you know, ended up on the IL. And that's
06:49
something that, you know, we couldn't have predicted. Well, Craig, with that being said,
06:54
I know we're still in the season, but is there going to be a big push by front office and
07:00
ownership to really be big players in the, I don't want to say free agent market just
07:08
necessarily, but going after maybe elite players this off season?
07:14
Yeah, you know, I think I said it last year, I'll say it again, we have to be open to all paths
07:21
to improving the team. Obviously, we've still got 16 games and hopefully more left. And that's where
07:26
our focus is right now. But I think regardless, one thing we can take from 2024 is the development
07:34
on the field of a core group of players that we should be building around. And the recipe for
07:40
success here for a long time has been drafting and developed homegrown talent while also
07:46
supplementing that, you know, being free agency and trade. And I don't see a reason for that to
07:51
change. Craig, we didn't get the opportunity to ask anybody about this last week for the front
07:56
office report. But Raphael Devers made headlines last week when he didn't talk to media. I just
08:03
was wondering your feelings behind that. I know Alex Cora is standing behind his decision not to
08:08
talk to media. But is there a policy within the Red Sox organization for players to talk? And what
08:13
is Raphael Devers reasoning for not wanting to talk to members of the press? Yeah, no, I mean,
08:21
I think it would be unfair for me to speak on behalf of or for Rafi. What I can say is, you
08:29
know, I know this is a guy who goes out there and plays every day despite not feeling 100% despite,
08:36
you know, not wanting to make a big deal out of the fact that, you know, he probably would benefit
08:41
from or would have benefited from some time away. He's a guy that wants to be out there on the field
08:46
competing for his teammates. And, you know, there are times when, you know, there are frustrations
08:53
or disappointments in performance, either individually or as a team. And, you know,
08:57
some people in those moments choose to stand in front of the media and answer questions and
09:02
others don't. And I don't know that, you know, this is kind of quite the story that it became.
09:09
You know, I think we accept, you know, that Rafi is a phenomenal player who has the chance to,
09:16
you know, to have a Hall of Fame career. And there are days where he's going to answer
09:20
questions and there are days where he isn't. And, you know, I'm not sure that that has,
09:26
you know, kind of this outsized impact that others would maybe believe it to have.
09:31
James Paxton told our guy Rob Bradford that he plans to retire at the end of the season,
09:36
as he shared that with the organization as well.
09:40
Yeah, so we had talked about that kind of in, you know, in the aftermath of the injury and,
09:47
you know, how that was not the way that he or anyone else, you know, wanted to stare down
09:53
retirement. And so as a credit to him, he's still showing up every day and going through
09:59
rehab, you know, with the hopes of coming back in the postseason and helping us. You know,
10:04
I think that's a great motivation. Hopefully we can do our part and we can kind of realize
10:08
that together. He'll probably get Rich Hill back again next year, if necessary.
10:18
Oh, I don't get it. Not even a chuckle on that one.
10:24
I gave it a chuckle.
10:25
All right.
10:27
You better ask him his top three bands.
10:29
Oh yeah, speaking of that, Pearl Jam, Sunday and Tuesday. I'm going Tuesday.
10:35
Are you going either or both nights? That is your favorite band.
10:39
It is my favorite band. I am definitively not going on Sunday. I'm actually going to head down
10:44
to New York, Tuesday TBD. And so I feel like this moment has been building for the last six months
10:51
and I'm disappointing so many people if I don't actually end up going, but I will figure that out.
10:57
I mean, you and I, maybe we hang out in the pit Tuesday night.
11:03
Yeah. I couldn't think of anything else that I'd rather be doing.
11:07
Greg will be there Tuesday and Wednesday. If you don't make it Tuesday,
11:10
he'll be there for Post Malone Wednesday.
11:15
All right, Greg, thank you.
11:18
You're welcome. Have a good morning.
11:20
All right. There he is. Craig Greslow.
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