Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom addressed the abrupt roster trigger pulled which ended Kevin Plaweck’s tenure with the team shortly following their 2-1 on Friday against the Kansas City Royals.
During a guest appearance on Audacy Sports’ “The Bradfo Sho,” hosted by WEEI’s Rob Bradford, Bloom provided the organization’s reasoning and thought process behind the move which left many confused considering the point in the year with under a month left of games scheduled.
“You can say, well, still keep him around and do that to someone else, but that’s still someone else’s life and career,” Bloom told Bradford. “We can designate somebody else and no one says anything, we dodge that incoming, but is that really better? Is that really something we should feel good about when we look ourselves in the mirror at the end of the day?”
Plawecki, a clubhouse favorite, played in 60 games during his third campaign with the Red Sox this season and was celebrated by his former Boston teammates following the news.
“One thing that I think is really important here, we wanted to make sure that at least, in our minds — now, obviously, people can differ on this — that we weren’t going to do anything that was going to harm his career, knowing where he is coming up on free agency,” Bloom said. “I don’t think it’s good for his free agency for him to basically sit on the bench for a couple of weeks in case there’s another place for him to play.”
Bloom added: “We knew he was a good guy. We knew pitchers liked throwing to him. He was a guy where it was hard to anticipate how important he would become. We were just at the point with a couple of weeks left that there was no free lunch here.”
Perhaps it won’t be too long until the 31-year-old veteran gets back behind the plate with reported interest expressed by the Texas Rangers. Plawecki, an unrestricted free agent in 2023, can’t sign with another team until Wednesday.
