Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer on the Hot Seat Amidst Brutal 2026 Season

Even though it is not yet May, the Red Sox season is already feeling impossibly bleak. An April 23rd loss to the Yankees completed a three-game sweep and ended a homestand in which Boston went just 2-5 and offered little hope to its fans. The highlight was a stellar first start of the season by exciting youngster Payton Tolle, but even that was squandered by weak bats and relief pitching. Fans across New England are growing restless over the state of their franchise. Fingers are being pointed in every direction, but a significant number of them are landing on Craig Breslow, the team’s Chief Baseball Officer. The developing sentiment is that he has mismanaged roster construction, badly bungling one of the highest payrolls in MLB.

Breslow has been with the Sox since October 2023. In the two full seasons with him as CBO, the squad has posted an over .500 record and earned a Wild Card berth just last season. Those are not alarm-sounding results, but the executive’s moves over the last year have been questionable. The offense strategy jumps out as especially baffling. Though the 2025 situation that ended with Rafael Devers being traded is still shrouded in mystery, the minimal return on the best bat in the Boston lineup was troubling. As was letting Alex Bregman, the best post-Devers hitter, walk this past winter. The franchise then had real chances to land a replacement bat, especially Kyle Schwarber or Pete Alonso, but those free agents signed with other organizations without much noise from Beantown. This was all okay, Breslow assured fans and skeptics, because the 2026 team will be built on run prevention. Great starting pitching and great defense will be guiding lights. This philosophy has not looked promising so far, as the “run prevention” is not nearly good enough to carry one of the lowest-performing lineups in baseball. Boston is last in the league in slugging percentage and tied for last in home runs. Seems as if the runs Breslow is preventing are his own team’s.

Now, in the interest of fairness, the blame cannot fall entirely on Craig. There are historically good hitters underperforming, so maybe a look at the coaching staff is in the works, especially hitting coach Peter Fatse. Manager Alex Cora is also always under some fire, but given his track record of winning, moving him seems unlikely. Craig Breslow seems to be the most exposed person in the Red Sox organization right now, and the call for a shakeup, already loud, will only grow if the 2026 losing continues.