When the Red Sox announced last week that chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom had been fired, the team also added that general manager Brian O’Halloran had been offered a new role within the baseball operations department. Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic now reports that O’Halloran has decided to accept a new role and will move forward as the team’s executive vice president of baseball operations. O’Halloran will report to whomever the Red Sox eventually hire to oversee the baseball ops department.
O’Halloran joins assistant GMs Eddie Romero and Raquel Ferreira as longtime staples of the Red Sox front office who’ll remain with the club even after the recent restructuring. He’s spent more than two decades with Boston’s baseball operations department, originally joining the club as an assistant back in 2002 and gradually working his way up the ladder. He’d previously held titles of assistant general manager, vice president of baseball operations and director of baseball operations.
As a Boston-area native, O’Halloran surely found some additional appeal in remaining with the Red Sox even amid the turnover. Given his considerable front office experience and years working alongside names like Theo Epstein, Ben Cherington and Dave Dombrowski, he’d likely have drawn plenty of interest from other teams had he opted to explore opportunities in other organizations for the first time since 2001, when he was breaking into the business as an intern with the Padres. He’ll instead remain with his hometown organization in a high-ranking position and continue to work to get the Red Sox back on track in future seasons.
Terrible decision. Can’t change if you don’t change
Agreed. Several top candidates will pass on the job. “If I take the job, I have to have your guy working for me, so a spy and easy replacement?” — Who would want that.
Spot on, RSmith!
Time for Kennedy to go, too!
Oh well, I’ll take a mediocre candidate over Bloom.
Bloody – yes, I’d take a goldfish as head on baseball operations over Bloom.
Oh, you’ll be complaining about the new guy soon enough.
Bloom Derangement Syndrome. He’s gone get over it.
BDS is a real thing. You don’t just “get over” a disease.
Jeff Goldfish – the Dodgers exec?
Sheep.
So your a misogynist too ASSuming it won’t be a woman
He’s literally worked under the last 4 administrations so it hasn’t been much of a problem has it.
Agreed he’s an idiot to call a vp a spy hes probably never been part of an office team before. Half the people in that office could give info to ownership about the new pobo if they wanted.
Not a Red Sox fan but heres my 2cents on executive leadership. Good ‘ops’ leaders are hard to find. These are the guys and gals that execute on the strategy and overall vision set at the top. It is very possible this guy is a good ops leader and Bloom lacked vision. If this guy is good, whoever is the new boss will be thankful to have a capable operations insider to help navigate existing politics and execute a new strategy. It’s easy to throw the baby out with the bath water but it is very difficult to start completely from scratch while the bus is still moving. I think this is a move to stabilize the org while they chart a new vision with a new leader. This also removes him from consideration from the top job and clears the way for a GM to be handpicked by whoever they hire. I can’t say it’s a good move as an outsider but I do think it is a prudent move in the short term.
Great take good vibes
DBH – Hafta disagree, he is one of several Lucky protégés and he was in the front office for all 4 championships. Not his fault he took orders from Bloom, had no choice.
Good points,, all of you. Food for thought
I think retaining a lot of people indicates that John Henry sees a lot going right in the organization which is good. It will be interesting to see who Henry picks to run it all.
Suit – Who’s the lot of people? The new POBO will make most of the personnel decisions, don’t ya think?
Fever: Not sure. Everyone has been retained except Bloom so far, correct? I hope the new POBO can make all the decisions, but it looks like John Henry wants to retain O’Halloran.
Suit – It’s common practice in any business or sports team to let the new boss evaluate the team he’s inherited and decide who to keep, who to fire, and who to re-assign. In the meantime the team still needs to be run, so Henry can’t fire everyone even if he wanted to.
Sam and Brian are special cases, valued by ownership for their many years with the team. Almost everyone else just has to wait and see if the new POBO decides to keep them, they are far from safe. For continuity purposes, some of them have to stay because of their team-specific knowledge they retain.
That’s one reason why I figured Bloom would get fired in September, after they fell out of contention. You don’t want a boss firing other people if he himself is about to be fired.
Fever: That is true, but John Henry doesn’t strike me as someone who always follows common practices. Promoting someone (O’Halloran) to Execute Vice POBO before you hire a POBO seems quite uncommon. Let’s see what happens. Hopefully, it turns out well.
Too many cooks in the kitchen. Who really pulls the strings here?
There’s so many names with all these different titles. It was even worse when Larry lucchino was part of the ownership yet had his hand in every personnel decision. Still seems chaotic.
So Bloom is the Fall Guy because of the last place finish but there’s way too many hands on deck. What do all these guys do? GM’s, assistant GM’s, Ops managers…
Gary – You can’t be serious with your criticism of Lucky.
Who’s Lucky?
Blue – Larry Lucchino.
I think he played GM too much and that wasn’t his role. They realized it after a while and asked him to go home. You don’t agree?
Gary – You really aren’t aware of the history?
Larry Lucchino became Theo’s mentor going all the way back to Theo’s days as an intern with the Orioles. When Larry went to the Padres, he took Theo with him. And when Larry went to the Red Sox, he took Theo with him.
Larry is the one who gave 27-year-old Theo his first Assistant GM job.
And on November 24, 2002 Larry is the one who made 28-year-old Theo the youngest GM in MLB history..
Because Theo had only one year experience as an Assistant GM, Larry is the one who surrounded Theo with experienced baseball men in the front office when Theo was promoted to GM. It was a Super Team of front office guys if there ever was one:
Mike Port
Lee Thomas
Ben Cherington
Bill James
Bill Lajoie
Allard Baird
espn.com/mlb/news/2002/1126/1467276.html
“The 28-year-old Epstein was promoted to general manager of the Red Sox on Monday, and the team said it would surround him with more experienced baseball people.”
The problems with Theo arose when he wanted more power by trying to force Larry out. Talk about an ungrateful protege. We all know who won that power struggle.
The reason Larry left was because Henry wanted to replace the younger, less experienced Cherington with HOF’er Dombrowski and there was no need for both Larry and Dave to be in the same front office. Plus Larry wanted to focus on other less stressful things (PawSox, WooSox, FSG, Jimmy Fund, etc). Don’t forget he had health issues including a battle with cancer.
One thing many people fail to realize, John Henry viewed Bloom as another Theo. But in all fairness to Bloom, he wasn’t afforded the luxury of being surrounded by a Super Team of experienced front office guys the way Theo was. Even CHB said in a recent podcast that Bloom simply didn’t have the experience.
The problem is Larry never knew when to get the hell out of the way and let the baseball people do their job. He was always the voice in the room worried about selling things to the fans, which heavily influenced free agent debacles like Carl Crawford and Pablo Sandoval. Larry is the one who after the team forced Francona out blaming him for the 2011 collapse and telling the team they weren’t looking for “a Bobby Valentine type manager” to succeed Tito went to a baseball round table discussion in Hartford, CT that Valentine was at and then pushed him through as the manager to succeed Francona. That disaster is ALL on him. That’s why ownership bought out Pawtucket as the AAA team, moved it to Worcester and put LL I charge of getting the new ballpark built and running that team, because building ballparks is something he’s actually good at. Running a major league team, not so much.
King – Yes that’s true Lucchino was hot for Bobby, but as always John Henry had the most impact on the decision to hire him and Henry was very impressed that Bobby was a longtime Bill James disciple. If Henry wasn’t on board, it wouldn’t have happened. That’s why he participated in the hiring process, and in fact Henry was the reason Ben’s choice – Sveum – wasn’t hired.
Lucky was the top ops guy for Boston’s first three championships after an 86-year drought. You say he was too much involved in ops, so that means he deserves credit for those 3 championships … correct?
Not to mention his championships with the Orioles and Skins.
Bottom line is if Larry hadn’t pushed for him Valentine is never considered. You can try and spin it any way you want to now but I followed the entire thing in detail when it was happening.
Fever excellent breakdown of the history with Larry lucchino. I appreciate it. That all sounds familiar and spot on, but I would never be able to recount it like that. Memory isn’t that good and I don’t think I knew all those details to begin with !! Nice job and good post.
King – Read my first sentence again, I agreed with you.
Gary – Thank you, I appreciate it. Back in the 2000’s it was truly a team effort in the front office, and they could have easily won 2 more championships in 2003 and 2008.
Bring me Gomes or another big market, battle tested GM. Kim Ng would be alright but scares me with the no big market experience (at least running things) and some of the contracts she’s given out have been very questionable (Avisail Garcia, Segura, and Soler until this year).
Actually I think this year is the first year she’s been responsible by herself for the decisions.
Really? Hmm didn’t know that. If so, she’s done a great job this year. Extending Sandy, getting Arraez, and Jesus Luzardo for 2 months of Starling Marte have been great moves
Jake – I’ve already said I’d be happy with her, although Click would be better.
James Click would make a lot of sense as well
Jake, actually I believe I read it on this website. Maybe a few days ago or last week?
Here you go buddy, Took me a few seconds. You’re welcome. mlbtraderumors.com/2023/09/latest-on-kim-ngs-contr…
Congrats, you habitually read this website, buddy.
Thank you icon. I should have done the same but didn’t take the time.
As a fan of a different team, i see promoting within meaning that the other executives disagreed with Bloom, which means the organization was dysfunctional.
Dante Hicks has a job – so great! Maybe Jay and Silent Bob can take over scouting?
“I’m not even supposed to be here today”
Alternate headline: Red Sox Assistant GM but with a different title accepts new position as Red Sox Assistant GM but with a *different* different title.
Time to stop running this team like a small-market operation. Replace the entire front office. Start the closet cleaning with Alex Cora. Let him go coddle his fellow Latinos in Puerto Rico. Trevor Story isn’t a utility man. Rafaela isn’t a shortstop. I say do a complete 180 and get either Jason Varitek in there or a guy I always loved, Bo Porter, who was never given another chance. Then can B.O., Romero and Token Raquel. Start running this team like a winner.
“coddle his fellow latinos”
Could you imagine someone saying “coddle his fellow Caucasians”
Me either.
@I.M. 8 agree with a lot of what you posted, except Ceddanne actually IS a shortstop. he plays both SS and CF regularly.
Sox should play him at short and Story 2B, but they can’t because 1)Henry has to admit to signing off on a bad deal with story, and 2) The FO has hyped Mayer beyond reality
no. They should be playing Ceddane in center. His glove is equally superior in the OF and it’s more of need until Mayer is ready.
ace, we akeeady have outfielders. We need a true 2B. Yes, Ceddanne is a better CF than SS, but he can play 2b well. Story however is great at 2b
DBH – Yorke is projected to arrive next year, just curious why you’re down on him?
Story is fine at SS especially after his surgery.. There is much less of a need to prioritize 2B.I also suspect and sincerely hope that Verdugo will be gone in the off season hence the need for an elite CF.
We only need a stopgap 2B, if at all.
Expected to be in Majors by 2025:
Trevor Story
Marcelo Mayer
Ceddanne Raphaela (prob OF, but avail if necessary)
Nick Yorke
Brainer Bonaci
Emmanuel Valdez
David Hamilton
Chase Meidroth
Eddison Paul
Pablo Reyes
A couple of names that arent getting enough attention: Brainer Bonaci and Chase Meidroth.
I dont think all will be major leaguers, but middle infielders are 2 positions that they can go into 2024 on the weak side and see what shakes out. Money should be spent elsewhere. Starters, a new Closer, short-term RFer.
Acell – I think we all expect Dugie to get traded. Between Abreu, Duran, Yoshida, Rafaela and maybe Duvall there are plenty of options.
Confusing titles. Henry wants to save cash, dump some of the titled folks, Kennedy only seems to sign the checks and show up for pregame ceremonies. Maybe other
Teams have layers of execs too……
Too bad bloom stuck them with non performing players. The offseason will be interesting.
Story and sale will get injured again…Il cash and rehab….
Kim NG might be a good choice.
It’s impossible to comment on this “promotion” without knowing what O’H has been doing for the last 20 years. Someone mentioned Gomes, whom I also like as a candidate for Bloom’s job, but being with the Dodgers, he could be busy all of October. Will ownership wait that long to interview?
And Chris Smith at Masslive writes that Cora and Eddie Romero are the two best candidates for the job. Can anyone imagine either being promoted over O’H? I mean, the owners have exercised such great care in handling O’H that it seems impossible they would then have him report to someone who just this year reported to him. And that’s not even considering whether Cora is genuinely a good candidate for the job–Romero probably more so, but how much?
Horace – Chris doesn’t sound very intelligent then. Bloom couldn’t handle it with his limited front office experience, what does that say about Cora and his ZERO front office experience? Hopefully Henry isn’t dumb enough to make the same mistake twice, he needs to bring in someone with experience. Preferably someone who didn’t mastermind a cheating scandal.
This doesn’t change anything…
Is that his high school year book picture ?
Don’t read too much into this. It’s a lets keep everyone happy move. It’s not like they gave Barney Fife a bullet for his gun, they gave him a new title, new digs and a pat on the back for his service. He is now officially “out to pasture”, not as a spy, just as a guy who won’t be forced out with a gold watch so he gets put on a different shelf.
Dear Red Sox,
Please hire David Forst.
Best,
An A’s Fan
Anyone have thoughts on Kim Ng?
Don’t think Miami will let her go. Had a nice first year in charge on her own.
Is this the whitest dude ever?