With their 2023 season in the books, the Boston Red Sox are ready to begin their search for a new general manager.
Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy spoke to reporters on Monday and shared how the organization plans to go about finding Chaim Bloom's replacement.
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"The search for the next leadership within baseball operations has begun," Kennedy said during his end-of-season press conference on Monday. "I want to make sure everyone understands that this is going to be a much different process than the last time we had a change of leadership. And what I mean by that is we plan to take our time, plan to be very deliberate. We're going to have internal candidates, we're going to have external candidates. We are going to have a consistent, robust process that hopefully leads us to the right person or people.
"We've been underway since announcing the change, and we don't have any set deadline or timeframe. We're going to go through this process this offseason and we'll have an announcement when it's appropriate."
Boston already has been linked to a handful of candidates including Philadelphia Phillies vice president and GM Sam Fuld, Cleveland Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti, and Oakland Athletics GM David Forst. If internal options are considered, assistant GM Eddie Romero is a strong candidate for the role.
As for whether manager Alex Cora could be elevated to a front office position, that won't happen -- at least not in 2024. He informed Red Sox ownership he is "not ready" to be the next GM and removed his name from consideration.
Kennedy added that he expects formal interviews to be conducted starting "later this week, maybe early next week."
"We have not conducted any formal interviews yet," he said. "But we've had conversations internally and we've had conversations externally. Being respectful of clubs and Major League Baseball rules and teams that are still playing, we have to make sure we navigate all that over the next several weeks."
Whoever replaces Bloom will be counted on to make some potentially franchise-altering moves in a pivotal offseason for the club. Coming off their second consecutive last-place American League East finish, the Red Sox have several holes to fill throughout their roster heading into 2024, primarily in the starting rotation.