Nail meet coffin
The perception was that trades had to be won by a wide margin instead of getting value for value. There were some that were some approaches which were debatable, and others that really weren't.
One instance was particularly striking. Per a major league source familiar with the situation, just before the 2022 trade deadline - and a few weeks after Chris Sale had broken his finger broken in his second outing of the season - a team approached Bloom about dealing for the lefty. The acquiring club was agreeing to take on all of the money left on Sale's contract (2 1/2 seasons of more than $50 million), while sending some semblance of players. The Red Sox wanted better players than were offered and no deal was done. SOURCE
Chaim Bloom sucked at the job. Period. His only discernible skill was quite literally creating algorithms defined to identify talent. Welp, that didn’t work. He was brought to Boston to cut payroll and remain competitive through the Tampa Bay Ray model where Bloom came from. Whether you agree with that being right or not form a big market team is irrelevant. That was the task given to Bloom. The problem is he didn’t actually have any experience doing it. There is no greater example of Bloom being out in front of his skis than this Chris Sale story.
Unless your name is Danny Ainge you are simply just not going to win every deal you make in professional sports. And even he had a shelflife. It’s almost neccesary at times to “lose” a deal on paper if that’s what’s best for your ball club. Bloom had no idea what was best for the ball club. He sees the world like reading the Matrix. He stacked low end prospect upon low end prospect upon long shot MLB players with injury history looking for his diamond in the rough. There was never a clear path identified. He had no identity as a GM. He simply followed the algorithms right to the basement of the AL East.
I guess in hindsight I’d take one more year of Chris Sale over an extension for Chaim Bloom. If it took completely blundering another deal and another last place finish to get there, well so be it. You gotta hit a rock bottom in order to start working your way back up.
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