Boston Red Sox hire former Team Israel pitcher Craig Breslow to lead baseball operations
Craig Breslow speaks during the 2023 Boston Red Sox Winter Weekend at MGM Springfield and MassMutual Center in Springfield, Mass., Jan. 21, 2023. (Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)
(JTA) — The Boston Red Sox have reportedly hired former Team Israel pitcher Craig Breslow to lead their baseball operations department.
Breslow, 43, replaces Chaim Bloom, a fellow Jewish Yale University graduate who was fired by the team last month. The Boston Globe first reported Breslow’s hire Tuesday, and MassLive reported that Breslow will hold the same title — chief baseball officer — as his predecessor, becoming the face of the team’s front office and its lead decision maker on players, coaches and personnel.
Breslow played 17 years of professional baseball, including 12 seasons in the MLB, during which he pitched for seven teams. He played for Boston two separate times, including as a member of the 2013 World Series championship team. He also pitched for Team Israel in the qualifying round for the 2017 World Baseball Classic but ultimately dropped out of the main tournament to pursue an opportunity with the Minnesota Twins.
Shortly after his playing career ended, Breslow was recruited by Theo Epstein (another Jewish former Red Sox executive) to join the Chicago Cubs front office. Breslow served as the club’s director of strategic initiatives in 2019 before being promoted to director of pitching in 2020 and finally assistant general manager in 2021.
Breslow, who majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale, was often called “the smartest man in baseball” during his career. He grew up in Trumbull, Connecticut, and attended Congregation B’nai Israel in nearby Bridgeport. Breslow had a bar mitzvah in 1993 and has fasted while pitching on Yom Kippur.
“Being Jewish is more difficult in baseball… but I try to do what I can in terms of paying attention to holidays,” Breslow told Moment magazine in 2011.
Breslow — who still lives in Newton, a Boston suburb with a sizable Jewish population — had emerged as a leading candidate to take over the Red Sox job shortly after Bloom’s abrupt departure.
Fellow Team Israel alumni Sam Fuld, the Philadelphia Phillies’ general manager, and Gabe Kapler — who was fired from his role as manager of San Francisco Giants earlier this month and replaced by fellow Jewish manager Bob Melvin — were also considered possible replacements. Kapler, who had previously worked as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ director of player development, interviewed for the job and was seen as a serious contender, while Fuld was one of many candidates to decline an interview. Twins general manager Thad Levine, who is Jewish, also interviewed for the opening.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Today is the last day of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need you to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Today is the last day to contribute.
