BOSTON — About 3 ½ hours before first pitch Friday night, Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom was walking through the Fenway Park concourse when he bumped into the man who might just define his legacy in Boston. For the first time since trading him to the Dodgers in a blockbuster deal almost four years ago, Bloom got the chance to see Mookie Betts in person. The two men embraced and exchanged pleasantries. Then, as they did In February 2020, they went their separate ways.
Betts’ return is the big storyline around Fenway Park this weekend. Bloom knows that reality perhaps better than anybody. But with the Red Sox trying to chase down other American League wild card contenders as they open to their third-to-last homestand of the regular season, the reunion wasn’t the only thing on Bloom’s mind.
“First and foremost, it’s a big series for us,” Bloom said shortly after talking with Betts. “Every win matters right now. That is front and center for us, and it’s our primary focus.
“I know the significance beyond (the weekend),” he added. “And I hope and expect, for that matter, that Mookie the other guys who did some really good things here get the reception that they deserve.”
Plenty of time has passed since Bloom dealt Betts and David Price to Los Angeles for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong, but the sting of the trade still lingers for Red Sox fans who grew to love Betts during his six years in Boston. Bloom knows that and understood the magnitude of the deal at the time. Still, he stands by why the Red Sox did it.
“I’ve said it before — he’s one of the best players in the game,” Bloom said. “It was really all about where we were as an organization. We just weren’t positioned to build around him at that point in time. And they (the Dodgers) were. There were a number of hard choices we were gonna have to make to try to get the organization on more stable footing.
“There are a number of different things that we needed to do and obviously some of that was going to come from within and rebuilding the system. But some of that was gonna come from outside. I believed then and believe now that as an organization, we had to think longer term at that point in time. It’s hard to move a player of that ability level and it was hard to do emotionally within the organization. But those are the things that we had to contemplate because of where the organization was at.”
Bloom took over after a disappointing 2019 season during which Boston’s title defense fell well flat, leading to the firing of president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski. Tasked with a mandate to cut payroll to get under the competitive balance tax threshold and with the goal of adding young talent in mind, Bloom sent Betts, Price and cash to the Dodgers for Verdugo (a talented young outfielder with major league experience), Downs (one of the Dodgers’ top prospects) and Wong (a catching prospect with athletic upside). Verdugo and Wong developed into capable regulars for the Red Sox while Downs flamed out as a prospect and was claimed off waivers by Washington over the winter. He has bounced back and forth between the majors and minors this season.
With Verdugo a year away from free agency and Wong just now establishing himself as a starting catcher in the majors, it’s not yet clear exactly how much value the Red Sox received for Betts, who was a year away from free agency and not aligned with the Red Sox on his value at the time of the deal. It’s clear, though, that none of the three players the Red Sox got in the deal have ceilings close to that of Betts, a perennial MVP candidate who is in the midst of yet another excellent season. That was a reality Bloom knew when he made the trade.
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“When you’re trading a player that close to free agency and you’re getting back guys who are gonna be with you for a long time, you don’t expect the same singular talent in return,” Bloom said. “That’s not generally how this works, but again, we were in a position as an organization where unless we had a more stable long-term talent base, we weren’t ever gonna be able to win at the pace that this organization needs to win.
“Obviously one of them (Downs) isn’t with us anymore and we saw last week there’s talent there. He may yet realize that talent at the major league level on a consistent basis, but he didn’t with us. That one didn’t work out for the Red Sox. We’ve gotta own that. That doesn’t sit well with us. Obviously, with the other two guys, there’s still plenty of their story to be written. But they’ve shown the talent on the field that we saw. They’ve shown it here and they’ve helped us win in the past. They’re helping us win now, and we’re happy we have them.”
Bloom may forever be known as the guy who traded Betts at the peak of his powers, but he has never allowed that label to define him, at least publicly. As he looks back, Bloom doesn’t second-guess the move, though he does acknowledge regret about how publicly the different versions of the proposed trades played out publicly. His focus remains the same as it does on his first month on the job: building a young core that may form the nucleus of the next great Red Sox team. Bloom considers his legacy unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
“If you’re worrying about that in this business, you’re worried about the wrong things,” he said. “You should be worried about doing your job, doing the right things for the organization. I’m pretty confident we wouldn’t have done what we did in ‘21, even though we didn’t go all the way, had we not made that deal. Obviously, there’s a lot more of this story left to be written. But to me, if you start worrying about yourself or your legacy, you’re not doing your job.
Bloom said he didn’t know he would end up trading Betts when he was hired by the Red Sox in Sept. 2019 but began realizing it was a possibility as that offseason wore on. Like Betts, he declined to get into the specifics of the broken-down contract talks that led to a trade. Bloom said he never felt like a Betts trade was an absolute must.
“I don’t think you’re ever in a situation or rarely in a situation where you, quote unquote, have to trade a player,” Bloom said. “The way I saw it was, given where the organization was, it was conceivable that we might get enough long-term talent that it was something we would have to consider. I said when I got here that it wasn’t something I anticipated doing. Then, as the winter rolled on and the interest began to define itself, it started to seem likelier.”
By the beginning of spring training, that likelihood became a reality. And for the next three days, Bloom will get an up-close-and-personal look at the one he trade away.
“He’s one of the best players in the game,” Bloom said. “Everybody follows what he does.”
