The Boston Red Sox saw their primary goal of making the postseason in 2024 come crashing down on Wednesday night when the team was eliminated from playoff contention by the Toronto Blue Jays 6-1.
Their elimination comes after Boston was nine games above .500 just over a month ago.
Many things went wrong for the Red Sox both before and throughout the season, and chief baseball officer Craig Breslow understands how much of a disappointment it is for the team to miss the postseason for a third year in a row. He sees it the same way.
“I think you have to,” Breslow said (via. MassLive). “We play these games to make it to the postseason and win a World Series. So falling short of that, it should be a disappointment. I want it to be a disappointment; I want it to hurt. That doesn’t mean that we can’t find things that we did well or things that are encouraging or reasons for optimism.
“But at the end of the day, you play these games to win games and get to the postseason. And we’re potentially looking at a season where that didn’t happen.”
While understanding the result isn't what anyone wanted, and this is a results-based business, Breslow still sees some good in what happened this year with his club.
“I think there’s a bunch of different ways to look at progress,” he said. “I think we know a lot more about who we are, both in terms of what our strengths are and what are deficiencies are. I think it’s pretty clear heading into the offseason what we have to address. I think we’re prepared to do that. I would say yes, we’re in a better position today than we were when we started this season, both from an infrastructure standpoint and also because we now can look and say the progress of Tanner (Houck) and Kutter (Crawford) and (Brayan) Bello on the mound and the emergence of (Justin) Slaten and some of these guys in the last month, have really pitched leveraged innings for us.
“We saw what David Hamilton’s arc looked like when he was healthy and with (Ceddanne) Rafaela, there’s still work to do, but pretty exciting player. (Wilyer) Abreu has slumped lately, but we got a sense of who he is and how he can be added into the group. So I think when you look around, in that way and say, ‘OK, a year ago, we would have asked: What is Ceddanne? What is David Hamilton? The answer was, we weren’t sure, we’ll find out. But I think the answer now, pretty definitively, is that they’re good major league baseball players. Now, we’ve got to continue to push and develop and we’ve got to figure out how to complement some of these pieces. But for those reasons, we’re better off than we were.
“And then you look at a bunch of guys in the rotation pitching more innings than they ever had and making 30 or more starts, the adjustment that those guys were able to make midway through the season when it seemed like the league was starting to react to the secondary dominant offerings that we had...I think all of that bodes well.”
Boston has to change some things this offseason. Their needs are obvious, and they should have both the money and trade chips to add pieces that make the Red Sox a championship contender again.
It will be on Breslow and ownership to the trigger.
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