Here’s what Chaim Bloom said about the Red Sox’ determination and playoff push

Red Sox

“You talk about Toronto and Texas: We want to play Toronto and Texas.”

The Boston Red Sox currently sit five games back of a wild card spot with a little over three weeks left in the season.

Despite the uphill battle the Red Sox have to climb to reach the playoffs, chief of baseball operations Chaim Bloom embraces the challenge and says that his players do as well.

“These guys are engaged, they are battling,” Bloom said Thursday on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show.” “And the fact that the schedule is tough. … You talk about Toronto and Texas: We wanna play Toronto and Texas.”

Currently, the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers hold valuable wild card spots that the Red Sox hope to snatch. Boston has winning records against both of those teams this season, and they will play both in the coming weeks. Bloom is ready to face them—and other teams with better records—and move closer to the playoffs.

“To do what we wanna do,” Bloom said, “You want to play the teams that are ahead of you. That’s how you gain ground.”

It’s been a turbulent year for the Red Sox. Nearly every promising win streak they’ve had this season has been followed by a devastating skid. They currently sit four games above .500 and two above the New York Yankees for fourth in the division. If the season ends with the Yankees ahead of the Red Sox, Boston will likely have its third last-place finish in four years.

That time span coincides with the length of Bloom’s tenure in Boston. He was hired in October 2019 and made one of the biggest trades in Red Sox history by sending star outfielder Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Red Sox have seen some success since then, namely an ALCS appearance in 2021, but have mostly ended seasons with middling records. 

There’s been a lot of blame placed on Bloom for the Red Sox’ lack of success, but he says his team’s change of approach and prioritization of young farm talent was borne out of necessity.

“We knew coming in almost four years ago that we were gonna have to make some tough choices,” Bloom said. “That we just were not in a position to keep our foot on the gas in a way that the organization had the few years prior.”

In Bloom’s eyes, the Red Sox were trending downward and needed to take a different direction. If they didn’t, he said, they would sit perpetually at the middle of the standings, not bad enough to earn high draft picks or first grabs at waivers, but not good enough to compete for a title.

“[Continuing to go all in] just wasn’t realistic with where things were going,” Bloom said, “And it would’ve put us even deeper in a hole and it would’ve put us in a situation where you are in one of those half-decade valleys where you don’t even sniff contention. … We still have a lot of work to do.”

The Red Sox will continue working on their playoff push on Friday night when they return to Fenway Park and play a three-game series against the AL East-leading Baltimore Orioles.