Despite what has thus far been a forgettable 2022 season for the Boston Red Sox, the team has no plans to move on from chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom or manager Alex Cora, according to team president and CEO Sam Kennedy.
“I am very comfortable saying Chaim and Alex will be back,” Kennedy told The Athletic on Monday. “And I am very comfortable saying there is a strong belief in the direction of the franchise from our ownership group. That direction is continuing to build for the future, but also continuing to invest at the major-league level.”
At 62-66 entering play Monday night, the Red Sox find their playoff hopes fading. They currently reside at the bottom of the AL East — 5½ games behind the rebuilding Baltimore Orioles — and seven games back of the second wild-card slot.
“We’re all incredibly disappointed in how the season has unfolded. It’s certainly not where we thought we would be when we came into camp,” Kennedy told The Athletic. “We had a magical 2021 year where we were two games from the World Series. We went out and added to what was an incredibly talented group with Trevor Story. We were very optimistic about our chances and where we were headed and incredibly excited that our baseball operations group had just done a fantastic job of building for the future at the same time.
“To be looking up at the American League East at this point of the year is painful and frustrating. And frankly we deserve the criticism we’re getting. We’ve got to own that. It’s on us. But we’ve been around here a long time and we’re prepared to turn things around quickly here as we head into ’23.”
The Red Sox have been marred by injuries this season — including to the aforementioned Story, as well as starting pitchers Chris Sale, Nathan Eovaldi and Michael Wacha, closer Tanner Houck and center fielder Enrique Hernandez, among others.
Bloom, 39, joined the Red Sox in October 2019 from Tampa Bay, where he oversaw a Rays team with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball in 2019 that went on to make the playoffs for the first time since 2013. He replaced Dave Dombrowski, who was fired just 10 months after Boston won the 2018 World Series.
Bloom’s first year coincided with the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, during which the Red Sox finished last in the AL East at 24-36. A year later, Boston posted a 92-70 regular-season record and came within two wins of reaching the World Series, falling in the ALCS to the Houston Astros in six games.
Cora, 46, is in his fourth year managing the Red Sox, owning a 346-268 record and having led the club to a winning record in all three of his previous seasons at the helm, including setting a franchise record with 108 wins and a World Series title in 2018. Cora was let go after he was identified as a ringleader in the Astros sign-stealing scandal. After Ron Roenicke managed the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Cora was brought back to the Boston dugout.
The Red Sox exercised Cora’s option through the 2023 and 2024 seasons last November.
Information from The Associated Press was included in this report.