Outside The Confines: Doomed Bloom

This has been a bad year to be a president of baseball operations for MLB Sox team. After the White Sox cleared out the big offices, now it’s the Red Sox turn as they axed chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom after almost four years with the team.

Bloom came to the club after they fired Dave Dombrowski, and people believed that Bloom’s small-market mentality from his tenure with the Tampa Bay Rays could help right the cart for the Red Sox. One of the first things he did was to trade Mookie Betts, which will forever define his legacy with the organization. (Trading expensive superstar players is entirely in line with the Rays’ MO, so it shouldn’t have been surprising to see Bloom make this move).

Now that the Red Sox have continued to slump lower and lower in the AL East standings it was obvious someone was going to take the blame, and that person ended up being Bloom. Let’s see what some of news sites were saying about the move.

• Emma Baccellieri explains why Bloom was not the reason for Boston’s failures.
• Kiley McDaniel does his best to assess the firing and also determine who is to blame within the organization.
• Andy McCullough looks at how the Mookie Betts trade ultimately doomed Bloom. (The Athletic subscription required.)

Let’s get on to the rest of the links!

• Frederic J. Frommer has a deep dive piece on a racist radio interview from baseball history, well before integration.
• Kyle Kishimoto tries to decide if the AL Cy Young is a runaway or too close to call.
• The Mets honored an icon of women’s baseball, Maybelle Blair.
• This is genuinely fascinating.

• Zach Buchanan explains why Manager of the Year is just impossible to judge this season.
• Jonathan Mayo looks at the surge of Top 100 prospects who we have seen in the majors this year.
• Stephanie Apstein looks at the next hurdle ahead for the Braves now that they’ve clinched.
• Cody Stavenhagen and C. Trent Rosencrans bring the story of Deion Sanders and his legacy among his former teammates. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• Is it possible for the Mets to still be Metsing even post-trade?

• Ben Clemens has a little more on that Max Scherzer injury.
• Sarah Langs offers up some weird and wacky facts from the past week.
• Ronald Acuña Jr. raised a little ire in Philly when he mocked Phillies fans after the Braves clinched the division.
• The Jays have activated Matt Chapman off the IL for the last weeks of the season. (AP)
• Jen McCaffrey recalls how the 2003 ALCS game between the Red Sox and Yankees went on to define the Red Sox over the next 20 years. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• What a cool way to wrap up a long career.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Make it so.