Former Red Sox reliever favorite for team's top baseball operations job

The Red Sox’s search for a new baseball operations leader is accelerating, with one candidate pulling ahead of the pack. 

Alex Speier of the Boston Globe and Chris Cotillo of MassLive each indicate that Cubs assistant general manager Craig Breslow is the favorite.

Sources tell Speier that the Sox have already offered the position to Breslow, although there’s no indication he has yet accepted. Cotillo suggested this evening that the hiring process was gaining steam and the job could be filled imminently.

Breslow, 43, is a Yale graduate who spent 12 seasons in the majors as a reliever. While he spread that across seven organizations, he’s best known for his time with the Sox. The New Haven native pitched 211 innings across five campaigns with Boston, turning in a 1.81 ERA for the 2013 World Series club.

After concluding his playing career in 2018, Breslow signed on with the Cubs as their director of strategic initiatives for baseball operations. He shed that wordy title when he was named director of pitching one season later. The following year, the Cubs bumped him to AGM in Jed Hoyer’s front office, a title he has held for the last three years.

Boston fired chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom as the season was winding down. They haven’t announced the specific title of the person they’re planning to bring in as head of baseball operations. 

Since Breslow holds the AGM title, the Red Sox could offer him a bump to general manager — either as the leader of the front office (as seems increasingly likely), or as the second-in-command under a newly minted president of baseball operations.

Cotillo suggests the Sox could still bring in two new front office hires, utilizing the president/GM structure that has become commonplace around the league. They don’t need to make both additions simultaneously. 

The Tigers, for instance, left the GM role vacant for an entire season to afford incoming president of baseball operations Scott Harris time to choose his top lieutenant.

Even if there’s agreement on a hire in the next few hours, the Red Sox aren’t likely to make a formal announcement Tuesday. MLB dissuades teams from releasing noteworthy news on the day of postseason games. 

With two scheduled off days between tonight’s NLCS Game 7 and the first contest of the World Series, it’s possible a hire is finalized Wednesday or Thursday.