Chaim Bloom is well aware that every decision he makes as Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer is going to be critiqued.
That’s especially true of decisions involving fan favorites. And even more so when apparent countermoves don’t work out, like in the case of Nathan Eovaldi and Corey Kluber.
Eovaldi, who spent parts of five seasons in Boston, signed a two-year, $34 million contract with the Texas Rangers in December. Kluber, a two-time Cy Young Award winner whose career recently was beset by injuries, inked a one-year, $10 million deal with the Red Sox weeks later. As such, it’s easy to connect the moves, with Kluber essentially replacing Eovaldi in Boston’s rotation, and it would be an understatement to say the situation hasn’t worked in the Red Sox’s favor thus far.
Eovaldi, 33, is putting together an impressive first season with the Rangers, while Kluber, 37, just got bumped to the Red Sox’s bullpen after a dreadful start to the 2023 campaign.
So, what does Bloom make of the situation and the Red Sox’s overall calculus in going with Kluber over Eovaldi? He tackled that question Thursday on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show,” albeit in a way that respected the privacy of Boston’s offseason negotiations with Eovaldi.
“For a lot of different reasons, I don’t think it’s worth getting too deep into,” Bloom said. “What I would say about that is we love Nate, still love Nate, and we always will. Definitely wanted him back. There’s different decision points, timing things, during the offseason where different things happen, for us and for him. We were in touch the whole way. Without getting too deep into it, obviously things didn’t work out and he’s in Texas, and that’s obviously in the past, we turn the page.
“The big thing is, obviously, Corey has a pretty good track record of throwing strikes. For whatever reason, through nine starts, he just hasn’t done that consistently, hasn’t executed pitches consistently, which is obviously pretty surprising, because that has never been who he is — before all his injuries, since his injuries — and I’m sure he’s going to figure it out. He has incredible self-awareness, has been an incredible pitcher at all different phases of his career. We’re just not there right now. This is where we’re at. Really, at some point, we have five guys we had to put ahead of him. No one understands that better than Corey. He could not have handled that better in terms of that conversation, and he’s going to keep grinding and keep working. I totally understand the question. There’s obviously a lot of different things that go on during an offseason. But we’re obviously focused on the guys who are here.”
Kluber started Opening Day for the Red Sox. But he hasn’t looked like the pitcher he was last year with the Tampa Bay Rays or in 2021 with the New York Yankees, let alone the All-Star hurler he was earlier in his career with Cleveland. So, the Red Sox shifted him to the ‘pen with Garrett Whitlock set to return from the injured list. Boston’s rotation now consists of Whitlock, Chris Sale, James Paxton, Brayan Bello and Tanner Houck.
Eovaldi is on the other end of the spectrum. He tossed his second complete game of the season Tuesday night and has pitched at least seven innings in each of his last five starts, a stretch in which he posted a 0.86 ERA while holding opposing hitters to a .158 batting average. Overall, Eovaldi is 6-2 with 2.60 ERA and a 0.966 WHIP through 10 starts.
“No, we didn’t, but that’s not too unusual with a lot of these guys, just to let it go to free agency and then see how it plays out,” Bloom said Thursday of not negotiating with Eovaldi during last season. “Again, I think just respecting some of the relationships that are there and some of what went on, there’s things about a lot of that back and forth, as with any player, that I wouldn’t get into. It obviously just didn’t work out. That’s obviously the fact of the matter.”
All told, the Red Sox might regret how everything played out. Their rotation, with Kluber, entered Thursday with the fifth-worst ERA (5.47) in Major League Baseball. The Rangers, with Eovaldi, own the third-best (3.25).
“It totally depends on the player,” Bloom said of the notion you get what you pay for in MLB free agency. “Our jobs obviously with any deal we sign, of any magnitude, is to try to sign good deals and get good results. If you look at any successful team, they’re going to probably be successful in part because they have some players that they signed on good deals that way outperform those deals. And obviously if you have guys that underperform their deals, it’s going to be harder to have success. But I think whatever segment of the market you’re looking at, the goal is to make good moves, make moves that have good results. That can happen with really good deals, and any successful team it’s also going to happen with shorter deals, with smaller deals. In fact, it needs to happen if you want to be successful. So, you’re just looking to do well with every move you make, obviously understanding that it’s very, very rare that 100 percent of them go the way that you think.”
Hindsight, obviously, is 20/20. But letting Eovaldi slip away this winter has to be a tough pill for the Red Sox to swallow, even as they’ve managed to stay afloat in the American League despite tempered outside expectations coming into 2023.
