Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow has been busy this week.
Breslow, whose team is in the middle of a five-game skid, is a popular target for questions and criticisms regarding that losing streak and the lack of roster moves that have been made surrounding it. The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier got him on the record for an exclusive interview early in the week, ESPN’s Jeff Passan spoke with him for an exclusive last week. WEEI’s Greg Hill had another crack at peppering him with queries during their weekly sit-down, and the common denominator in all of it related to Roman Anthony.
How much losing will it take to promote baseball’s top prospect?
Breslow gave plenty of reasons for why the time just isn’t right, but in his Thursday interview on “The Greg Hill Show,” he finally delved into some specifics.
“We need to be mindful of the environment that Roman would be coming into, and the pressure that we’d be putting on a 21-year-old in the midst of a losing streak — to come up and save the team,” Breslow said, per Audacy. “Roman’s time is coming, and I don’t think there’s any question about that, so we have to figure out what is best for the organization and what is best for him.
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” … We want to make sure when he comes up, not only is he ready, but there’s runway for him to play. You don’t wanna bring up a 21-year-old and have him play sporadically, he needs to be in the lineup every day.”
The Red Sox could easily make room for Anthony, but that would involve moving the best defensive center fielder in baseball (Ceddanne Rafaela) off his position and permanently sitting down their second-highest-paid player (Trevor Story) on the club. Boston has already done plenty of shuffling of the roster to this point, forcing two rookies (Kristian Campbell and Marcelo Mayer) to routinely play out of position, while relying on utility men (Nick Sogard and Abraham Toro) to become everyday pieces of the puzzle.
Do we think it would be smart to throw another wrench into plans?
Breslow ultimately needs to make a hard decision, as he’ll either clear the way for the club’s top prospect or continue to let him toil away in the minor leagues while his big-league club suffers.
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