Who will be CBO?

[Sea Dog 23]

Heard a guy from Pittsburgh was in the mix.  He fits the bill for Henry - small market, low salary, perennial loser.

The Pirates guy must be Huntington, who is now with the Guardians as asst. to the Pres. of OPS.  Here's Speier's broad list of what looks like a lot of Plan B GM's.  GM's from the Guardians (Huntington), Twins (Levine) and Cubs (Breslow) have already interviewed as have Eddie Romero. Last weeks A list have declined interviews, (Fuld, Gomes, Hill, Daniels of Rangers, Falvey of Twins).

Speier has a larger (but speculative) list of internal and external candidates:

Internal: Ben Crockett, Raquel Ferreira (now withdrawn), Mike Groopman, BOH, Gus Quattlebaum Mike Rickard, Eddie Romero, and Paul Tobooni

External: Craig Breslow (Cubs assistant GM/director of pitching), Josh Byrnes (Dodgers senior VP of baseball ops), Mike Chernoff (Guardians GM), James Click (Blue Jays VP of baseball strategy), James Harris (Guardians assistant GM), Neal Huntington (Guardians special assistant to president of baseball ops), Matt Klentak (Brewers special assistant to the GM), Thad Levine (Twins GM), Sig Mejdal (Orioles assistant GM), Kim Ng (former Marlins GM), Eve Rosenbaum (Orioles assistant GM), and Zack Scott (former Mets interim GM).

Also notes that some internal candidates have been interviewed. Also Craig Breslow, Thad Levine, and Neal Huntington have interviewed.

[longgame]

It's Huntington. He was the Pirates GM before.

[MongoLikeSox]

Holy Crap! Um, is it any wonder we could not do a deal last two seasons? Kennedy must spend 4 days on Amazon choosing generic Raisin Bran. "Um, can you give me a raisin count? Per ounce of bran content is fine as long as you've got the past 3 years hydration rate variations by batch." Jeez!

[MongoLikeSox]

I read that one of the reasons Ng left Miami was because they were planning on bringing in a President of Baseball Operations that she would have to report to.

So I was thinking. Promoting the internal favorite does have an ancillary benefit of that in-house group finally having one of their own in charge. Put up or shut up time. If it works, great. If it bombs, then we have a clear and obvious  need for a house cleaning that not even Henry and Werner could deny.

[longgame]

Holy Crap! Um, is it any wonder we could not do a deal last two seasons? Kennedy must spend 4 days on Amazon choosing generic Raisin Bran. "Um, can you give me a raisin count? Per ounce of bran content is fine as long as you've got the past 3 years hydration rate variations by batch." Jeez!

Baseball teams are not large organizations.  I’ve worked for much larger companies with fewer chefs than Yawkey Way.  The layers of management they have are absurd.

[elktonnick]

Holy Crap! Um, is it any wonder we could not do a deal last two seasons? Kennedy must spend 4 days on Amazon choosing generic Raisin Bran. "Um, can you give me a raisin count? Per ounce of bran content is fine as long as you've got the past 3 years hydration rate variations by batch." Jeez!

Baseball teams are not large organizations.  I’ve worked for much larger companies with fewer chefs than Yawkey Way.  The layers of management they have are absurd.

Purported Henry dumped Dombrowski because he was not a process guy.  Bloom got fired in part because his deliberate style meant Boston was slow to react to the FA market and missed opportunities.  I wonder if Henry has stopped to realize that the byzantine Red Sox Front Office bureaucracy means that his process does not work and is the problem.

[longgame]

Exactly, it's an organizational mess and they are far too loyal to the wrong people.  On this team the CBO is a staff position in spite of the title.  Other people from Cora to Kennedy and a lot of hangers-on in between have special relationships with ownership and are untouchable apparently. 

[Sea Dog 23]

The Sox plodding, bureaucratic style this off-season will not lead to making deals with an Ohtani or a Soto, more like  March contracts with stars(?) like a Lance Lynn or a Kiermayer.  As one guy said jokingly the other day, 'Boston is not a destination city',  but probably, no truer words.

[Sea Dog 23]

This is really comical, James Click of the Jays just pulled his name out of consideration ... "for family reasons".

Is this a typical pre- interview, LOL

Sam Kennedy: "On a scale of 1-10, how much do you love your family?"

Candidate X: "Uh... 10?"

Sam Kennedy: "Sir, if you’re not up for the challenge, thanks but no thanks.”

[SeaBeachFred]

Holy Crap! Um, is it any wonder we could not do a deal last two seasons? Kennedy must spend 4 days on Amazon choosing generic Raisin Bran. "Um, can you give me a raisin count? Per ounce of bran content is fine as long as you've got the past 3 years hydration rate variations by batch." Jeez!

Mongo. if you were trying to convince me that Kennedy was a worthless bum totally unfit for his position, you could have saved your fingers from the computer.  This guy is a poster boy for paralysis by analysis.  Is it any wonder that we have a pack of turds  running the store who can't make up their addled minds about what they want to do to extricate themselves and the team from the barf pile they've created.  What is evident to me is that Prune Face does NOT want a strong leader to take the reigns as head of BO because he wants to pull the strings behind the facade.  Two last place finishes in a row, six in the last 12 years and these bums can't see the forest from the trees.  Since we stunk like rotten puke the past two years you would think some sense would emerge at Fenway Park but the sad and sorry truth is the beat still goes on and we still stink as a baseball team.  Memo to Kennedy and the Prune......GET YOUR ASSES IN GEAR AND START RESTORING OUR TEAM TO SOMETHING MORE THAN A LAUGHING STOCK!!!!!!!!

[elktonnick]

Fred, I am convinced Henry wants the status quo.  That is why he has crippled innovation and leadership by creating this bureaucracy to run the Red Sox.  Henry bought the team low for 500 million. Through innovation and leadership it grew to a multi billion dollar entity.  Henry knows that there is no great growth opportunity left with the Red Sox. He has turned his attention towards other ventures, acquiring other sports entities with growth potential.

The same is true with Liverpool.
Henry just wants both clubs to operate with predictable costs to generate sufficient income so he can leverage their equity to finance other sports ventures.

If either the Red Sox or Liverpool.win great.  But Henry will not go to any great financial lengths to see that they do because the growth potential is not there as it was 20 years ago.

[Sea Dog 23]

I don't profess to have read any tea leaves in this thing, but if I were to picture another franchise to be remotely typical of Boston, it would be the Marlins.  The owner has asked Kim Ng to take a GM position where she will report to a new OPS prez.  Boston may be looking for a new GM who will report to Kennedy (the new acting OPS prez?) and have to share his deals with the manager - Cora. 

Cora just might be promoted to GM next year when his manager contract runs out.  This year Cora could be acting as a Mike Scioscia type manager/exec officer type control person. So many layers upon layers of control and micro-management.

[Sea Dog 23]

Speaking of Cora and his input, a not so big name has come up on a couple of the other forums - Sig Mejdal of the Orioles.  He is the Asst GM, and is really steeped in analytics. He is noted as being the reason the O's farm system produced so quickly.  He established himself early as an engineer and worked for NASA and Lockheed.  I think he first got into baseball with St Louis . Speier put his name in his column this week among people who have not yet been contacted to interview.  But his list did include about 15 -20 names, so not definitive.

But Cora speaks highly of him, and they worked together at Houston while Cora was there.  If nothing else, he has not withdrawn his name yet!

[MongoLikeSox]

This is really comical, James Click of the Jays just pulled his name out of consideration ... "for family reasons".

Is this a typical pre- interview, LOL

Sam Kennedy: "On a scale of 1-10, how much do you love your family?"

Candidate X: "Uh... 10?"

Sam Kennedy: "Sir, if you’re not up for the challenge, thanks but no thanks.”

I actually had an initial phone interview interview that had a similar line of questioning. It pretty much concluded when he put it out on the line for me. "We're not looking for people who want to live strong outside (outside of work) lives". This was 30 years ago and I can still hear it in my mind.   

[MongoLikeSox]

Holy Crap! Um, is it any wonder we could not do a deal last two seasons? Kennedy must spend 4 days on Amazon choosing generic Raisin Bran. "Um, can you give me a raisin count? Per ounce of bran content is fine as long as you've got the past 3 years hydration rate variations by batch." Jeez!

Mongo. if you were trying to convince me that Kennedy was a worthless bum totally unfit for his position, you could have saved your fingers from the computer.  This guy is a poster boy for paralysis by analysis.  Is it any wonder that we have a pack of turds  running the store who can't make up their addled minds about what they want to do to extricate themselves and the team from the barf pile they've created.  What is evident to me is that Prune Face does NOT want a strong leader to take the reigns as head of BO because he wants to pull the strings behind the facade.  Two last place finishes in a row, six in the last 12 years and these bums can't see the forest from the trees.  Since we stunk like rotten puke the past two years you would think some sense would emerge at Fenway Park but the sad and sorry truth is the beat still goes on and we still stink as a baseball team.  Memo to Kennedy and the Prune......GET YOUR ASSES IN GEAR AND START RESTORING OUR TEAM TO SOMETHING MORE THAN A LAUGHING STOCK!!!!!!!!

It got muddier the last off-season for sure. Kennedy got involved early on, even taking on the press duties when the first few FA's did not sign with us. Now we're left to wonder just how much of this was Bloom, Kennedy and the rest of the management team.

Something Kennedy is saying to these candidates is turning them away from the start. It does not get a whole lot scarier than that.