It seems increasingly possible that ex-Boston Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts could become a free agent without playing a single game for his new team, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
But Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom isn’t exactly taking a victory lap.
The first-year Boston executive appeared on WEEI’s “Ordway, Merloni and Fauria” on Wednesday and was asked if the current coronavirus pandemic, which has indefinitely suspended the Major League Baseball season, makes him look at the February trade any differently.
“Obviously at the time we made it, we definitely thought that we were prioritizing the long view and the big picture for all the reasons we said at the time,” Bloom told the radio station, as transcribed by MassLive’s Christopher Smith. “I cannot sit here and tell anyone I had my Nostradamus hat on enough to know that a global pandemic was around the corner. Very unforeseen advantage of perhaps taking the long view.
“But while it wasn’t a fun process in a sense — it’s never a fun thing to part with a player of Mookie’s caliber and a player that means as much to an organization and a fan base as he does and as I think he always will — we felt like it was the right thing for the organization at the time.”
The trade, as you surely know by now, sent Betts and Red Sox pitcher David Price to Los Angeles in return for outfielder Alex Verdugo, shortstop Jeter Downs and catcher Connor Wong.
