Craig Breslow, Neal Huntington, and Thad Levine were the final three candidates for the Red Sox in their search for a new front office boss, MassLive.com’s Sean McAdam writes. That search came to an end earlier this week when Breslow was hired as Boston’s new chief baseball officer, putting the former Cubs assistant GM and 12-year big league veteran in charge of a front office for the first time.
Huntington and Levine were known to be under consideration, though Levine initially didn’t appear to be a finalist when reports surfaced this week that the Red Sox had told him he was no longer a candidate for the job. At the time, it seemed like the Sox were moving onto a second round of interviews in their hiring process, yet it now appears as if that second round had already begun, and the Sox had made their decision about Breslow. It seemed as though Breslow sealed the deal with a strong interview with Sox principal owner John Henry during that secondary stage.
Back in September, Peter Gammons reported that the Red Sox had some interest in Breslow for a possible role as a director of pitching development. That early link between Breslow and the Sox could tie into McAdam’s breakdown of how the team didn’t initially have Breslow on the radar as a CBO candidate at first, in part due to his lack of experience as a GM or president of baseball operations. However, as the Red Sox increasingly became open to the idea of at least making Breslow the chief lieutenant of a CBO, they still had difficulty finding someone appropriate for that top job, thus making Breslow an even more attractive candidate. McAdam also notes that the Sox were concerned that the Cubs might offer Breslow a promotion to stay in Chicago if he was offered anything less than a CBO position, or that another team might come calling about Breslow in the near future about a CBO/PBO job if he was only in a secondary role in Boston.
The front office search was marked by several notable executives who declined to interview with the Red Sox, though McAdam writes that Boston had interest in a candidate that seemingly wasn’t given permission for an interview. The Sox wanted to speak with Orioles assistant GM Sig Mejdal, yet the O’s “dragged their feet on the process and never provided the Sox with the go-ahead to speak with Mejdal,” according to McAdam.
The 57-year-old Mejdal has been with Baltimore since November 2018, and was one of Mike Elias’ first hires when Elias took over the Orioles’ front office as general manager. Mejdal has been one of the key figures of baseball’s analytics movement over the last two decades, as his work with the Orioles, Astros, and Cardinals has led those clubs to tremendous results in maximizing talent and finding and developing young players. As McAdam observes, it probably isn’t surprising that the Orioles wanted to keep Mejdal in the fold, even if most organizations generally allow employees to interview for promotions on other teams. It isn’t known if Mejdal would’ve been open to an interview anyway, as there has been some past speculation that Mejdal is happy in a behind-the-scenes role rather than running a front office himself.
Returning to Breslow, it’s still too early to tell how he’ll approach the makeup of his baseball operations department, which will continue to have several longtime holdovers (assistant GMs Eddie Romero, Raquel Ferreira, Michael Groopman) who are expected to stay in the organization. Whether one of them could be elevated to a full-time general manager role to act as Breslow’s No. 2 remains to be seen, or if he might hire a GM from outside Fenway Park to provide another new voice in the mix.
As for on-field matters, WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford speculates that Giants pitching coach Andrew Bailey might be a candidate to join Boston’s staff, as Breslow and Bailey are close friends and former teammates from when they pitched together with the Athletics and Red Sox from 2009-13. The Sox fired pitching coach Dave Bush after the season, and some recent reports suggest Bailey might look to leave San Francisco for a job closer to his family on the East Coast.