BOSTON -- Craig Breslow treated his first trade deadline more like decisive Dave Dombrowski than hesitant Chaim Bloom. He provided the pieces to keep the Red Sox alive in the American League playoff race, and hey, that's new!
After months of equivocation, Breslow finally let his ex-player bona fides shine. No matter his facility with analytics and biomechanics, or his tendency to speak in complex Mobius strips, the Yale graduate is a jock, too. And he recognizes when a team has legitimately earned help.
That's why he changed his tone this month from the persistent wait-and-see of May and June to the OK-got-it-we'll-do-something of recent weeks. Even better, he took a page out of Dombrowski's playbook by articulating exactly what he wanted: a right-handed bat, a starter, and ideally two relievers.
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Now, your mileage may vary on his choices to fill each role, but check, check, check, and check.
"Bit of a roller coaster," Breslow said Tuesday. "But I think that's pretty normal for this time of year. I think, most fortunately, we were able to accomplish what we set out to do."
What a welcome development. The chief baseball officer backed his players and manager.
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Breslow's predecessor had his strengths, namely the farm system he left behind, but conviction wasn't among them. Ownership soured at last year's deadline when Bloom couldn't pick a lane, froze, and then declared his team underdogs. The Red Sox tanked in August and fired Bloom in September.
Breslow arrived promising to be aggressive and decisive, and on that count, he delivered. The individual pieces may not particularly wow, but collectively, they addressed the club's most pressing needs while giving the distinct impression that the front office is engaged and cares.
Left-hander James Paxton, who wasn't particularly sharp in his return on Tuesday night (nor was he helped by his defense, to be fair), gives the rotation another veteran who can take a regular turn. Catcher Danny Jansen represents an upgrade on Reese McGuire and should help mitigate the club's struggles vs. left-handed pitching. Right-handers Lucas Sims and Luis Garcia will help the beleaguered bullpen. Quinn Priester, acquired from the Pirates, has long-term potential.
The upgrades probably rank closer to marginal than significant overall, but Breslow showed welcome urgency by addressing the bullpen immediately rather than waiting for setup men Chris Martin and Justin Slaten to return in the next couple of weeks, which might've been too late.
He nabbed Sims from Cincinnati and Garcia from the Angels because they're two arms with experience pitching in the seventh and eighth innings, respectively. The cost was not insignificant. An organization that spent the previous five years hoarding prospects like a cat person thinned the back half of its Baseball America top-30 list considerably, moving Nick Yorke (14th), Eddinson Paulino (18th), Matthew Lugo (23rd), and Ovis Portes (29th), among others. It took four prospects to land Garcia alone.
"There were certainly moments over the last week or so when we were saying, 'Man, this is going to be, not just expensive in terms of dollars, but expensive in terms of the impact it might have on our future,'" Breslow said. "It's a really tough decision to make.
"I do think there was some urgency around addressing (the bullpen)," he added, "and I didn't feel like waiting for our guys to get healthy was the best path for us."
So he did something about it. There wasn't a splash like Tarik Skubal or Garrett Crochet, and it's fair to say competitors like the Orioles and Mariners did more to improve.
But when confronted with a series of fissures, Breslow didn't let them spider and shatter. He filled them. We'll spend the next two months debating whether the effectiveness of his choices, but at least he gave his team a chance.