There is little practical difference between firing an executive with two weeks left in the regular season and firing him once the season is over. But there’s a big aesthetic difference. If an October firing can feel routine, customary, a matter of course, a September firing is always a statement. It’s a denunciation. And if every front-office shuffle necessarily comes with some shift in direction, it’s never so clear, so explicit, as when that shuffle begins in September.
So when the Red Sox fired chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom on Thursday, it was a declaration. But of what? It’s hard to say. Bloom was handed a difficult job in his four years in Boston: He came to town in the winter of 2019, the club just a year removed from a championship, yet he was immediately tasked with cutting payroll and rebuilding the farm system. It was not a particularly exciting time to take on what can be one of baseball’s most exciting gigs. Yet Bloom, by all accounts, did what was asked of him. And now he’s been axed.
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