The Red Sox have made some tweaks to their roster — before and after the Major League Baseball lockout — yet most of the conversation still revolves around what Boston hasn’t done.
Such is life with teams across MLB signing and trading players at a breakneck pace, especially when that rampant activity involves Boston’s primary competition in the American League East.
So, do the Red Sox feel like they’re being left behind?
“I don’t look at it that way at all,” Boston chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom told reporters Wednesday at JetBlue Park in Fort Myers, Fla. “I’m actually glad you asked that, because I want to be able to especially take our fans kind of behind the curtain. I think when you start looking at it that way, that’s when you get in trouble. The important thing is to focus on what you’re doing; not to focus on what everybody else is doing and not to focus on what kind of splash you might be able to make.
“If you go back to last offseason, I think, and we knew at the time, a lot of things we did were not things that were exciting people at the time that we did them. We were happy with them. We liked them in terms of all the options that we had. There were definitely ways that we could have invested equally in the team that would have generated a lot more headlines or created more of that feeling like we were keeping pace in the derby. But at the end of the day, they would not have made us better. And I actually think we were better for what we did than a lot of the other things we could have done that might have created that impression.”
The Yankees over the weekend acquired Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa from the Minnesota Twins. New York then agreed Wednesday to a two-year, $32 million contract with Anthony Rizzo.
The Blue Jays, meanwhile, acquired Matt Chapman from the Oakland Athletics on Wednesday, continuing an aggressive offseason in which Toronto also signed Kevin Gausman and Yusei Kikuchi to bolster its starting rotation.
Still, Bloom doesn’t feel pressured to swing for the fences. Oftentimes, knee-jerk moves can prove counterproductive when trying to build a sustainable contender.
“If you chase things, you can turn good opportunities into bad opportunities and put yourself in a position not to be able to take the next good opportunity,” Bloom said. “So we’re kind of looking at it that way — trying to stay focused on chasing down the things that make sense for us. Some of them are things people might expect; some of them are things they might not expect. And I don’t know in terms of timing, or in terms of when or what will happen just yet. But I think the important thing is not to get too distracted by all that stuff.”
The Red Sox will continue to kick the tires on moves, both big and small. They have more flexibility now than they did last year thanks to a stronger farm system and a better payroll situation.
But Bloom is steadfast that Boston won’t become desperate, even as obvious targets — like Kyle Schwarber and Seiya Suzuki, among others — come off the board and fellow AL contenders boost their own rosters ahead of Opening Day.
