Chaim Bloom found a comfortable spot beneath the shade. It was an off day for the major leaguers, and on the surface, the sprawling Red Sox spring training complex in Fort Myers felt relatively quiet. In the last five months, Bloom had uprooted his life, departed the only organization he’d known, traded away a franchise icon in Mookie Betts, dismissed a championship manager, promoted a new one in the wake of a scandal, and braced for the fallout from a probe that was launched to investigate deeds that predated his tenure. But as the 37-year-old executive looked back upon the turbulence that has defined his brief time as a general manager, he insisted that he has yet to wish for a do-over. His decision to leave the comfort of the Rays for the tempest that is the Red Sox still made sense, though he acknowledged, “there have been some moments that have been kinda surreal, I think you could call it that.”
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Of course, “kinda surreal” felt like a charitable description. This seemed especially true with Bloom. Despite making his name with the organization that introduced the world to the opener, history had been one of his earliest entry points into the game. He was once so steeped in its lore that his knowledge stretched back to the sport’s 19th-century dark ages. If anyone can take what had been an extraordinary offseason and place it in its proper context, it would be Bloom. But he seemed eager to take the next step in what has been an eventful transition into his job, at the head of what he called “a crown jewel organization.” He looked ahead to the reward for enduring a trial by fire — the pomp and circumstance of the home opener at a packed Fenway Park. It had been scheduled for last week.
“Having gone through this winter with my new teammates, I think there’s going to be a lot of emotions that I haven’t felt before on an Opening Day — but also some very familiar ones that connect you to all the Opening Days you’ve experienced and all the ones that came before you,” Bloom said. “And now when you’re taking one more step on this path that a lot of really special people have walked, and you’re continuing to build your own connection to it, I expect it’s going to be really cool. And the best part of it will be if we’re high-fiving at the end.”
Three hours after speaking those words, Bloom witnessed a $10.7 billion industry grind to a halt in the face of a worldwide pandemic. Days later, he announced that Chris Sale, his team’s best pitcher, required Tommy John surgery. Then what was supposed to be Opening Day came and went, greeted only by the silence of a shutdown that will last indefinitely. If it wasn’t clear before, the possibility is now impossible to ignore. Bloom could literally be presiding over the longest offseason ever.
Even in ideal circumstances, the challenge would have been daunting. Andrew Friedman faced a similar challenge in 2015, when he traded the relative anonymity of running the Rays for the spotlight of becoming president of the well-heeled Dodgers. Over the winter, he used an analogy he’s leaned on often. “You take your own personal snow globe and shake it up,” he said. “And then you hope that everything falls back into place.” In Bloom’s case, the snow globe has gotten a new shake every week, and some of the pieces remain up in the air. Major League Baseball has yet to release the findings of its investigation into allegations that the Red Sox used electronics to steal signs in 2018, their championship season.
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“Obviously, there’s been probably more than anybody would have expected for a typical offseason,” Bloom said. “But the group here has been great.”
Vulnerability, and the willingness to experience it, is a sign of trust. This leads to growth. He watched it at play often with the Rays, who he came to regard as family. He was curious to know if he’d sense it with the Red Sox. “The one thing you don’t know when you walk into the place is whether you’re going to feel as strongly about your new group that you’re working with as I did about the group that I left,” he said. But what he saw during the trying offseason offered reassurance that the Red Sox will be better off for having endured a maelstrom.
“There’s certainly so many eyeballs on this organization, but within the walls, I found the atmosphere to be refreshingly familiar,” Bloom said. “And I thought that was a really good thing because I felt really strongly about how positive the culture was with the Rays. It’s the same here. It’s a group of people that have each others’ backs, that care about each other, that look to lift each other up. … We work really hard. We spend a lot of time around each other. So if you like the people you work with, it makes a big difference. But also, I think it really helps success.”
It’s a feeling that he got to know well with the Rays.
The day before baseball shut down, Bloom returned to his roots. The first time the Red Sox played the Rays in the Grapefruit League, work kept Bloom from getting to the park until the first pitch, depriving him of a chance to catch up with his old friends. This time, he arrived three hours early. He hadn’t been on the Rays’ complex for more than five minutes before a receiving line formed in front of the visitors’ clubhouse. The shade of blue on his polo shirt might have made it easy to think that he’d never left. Only his bright red sneakers revealed his new reality. Longtime coaches stopped by. Support staffers checked in. Players, making their way between stations for workouts, detoured just to chat. He had not seen many of them face-to-face since making his transition. He looked comfortable.
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Among the visitors was Blake Snell, who became the type of success story that made Bloom a sought-after executive. A top prospect, Snell struggled upon his first taste of the big leagues, which required a trip back to the minors. He returned having taken a great leap forward with his command. He’d later go on to win the Cy Young Award. Beneath the glow of the Florida sun, Snell and Bloom chatted for half an hour.
“Those relationships will last,” Bloom said. “A lot of those folks, I love them ’til the day I die. It’s going to be fun to compete against them. I know them well enough and they know me well enough to know we’re going to be competing really hard against each other. That doesn’t erase how you feel about them as a person and how strongly you feel about what you were able to accomplish with them.”
People, not datasets, shaped Bloom’s rise. At Yale, he studied the classics before graduating to a baseball education with the Rays. He began as an intern in 2005 and soon found a mentor in Mitch Lukevics, the longtime baseball man who was one of the organization’s first hires. With his new colleagues, it didn’t take long for Bloom to leave an impression. “Incredibly hard-working, trustworthy, serious about his career,” said general manager Erik Neander, who joined the Rays two years after Bloom. “Could mix in some fun when the moment is right.”
Bloom cut his teeth in player development. When measured by sheer numbers, it is the largest department in baseball operations, a sprawling latticework of coaches and trainers and support staff, all of them scattered throughout a team’s minor-league affiliates. Success in this area is predicated on unified purpose. Reaching that ideal means deftly navigating a complex maze of relationships. It proved to be an ideal training ground.
“The great thing about the education that I got in this game was that I was able to learn from so many different types of people, people of all ages, all backgrounds, and you learn to really respect what everybody brings to the table,” Bloom said. “All the more so in a department as large as player development where the key to success is getting a lot of people to bring their own specific experiences, their own specific skills, to bring those to bear on the development of players. If everybody is the same, you’re not going to be able to accomplish as much as the people who are bringing different things to the table, as long as they’re working together and they’re working in sync, and that’s really one of the big picture challenges in development.”
To that end, in 2008, Bloom wrote his team’s definitive development manual, “The Rays Way.” Over the years he’d ascend the ranks of an organization that refined the art of doing more with less. It has since become a pipeline for teams looking for a similar edge. When Friedman departed for the Dodgers, Neander and Bloom formed the tandem that would serve as his replacement. By then, Bloom had spent the entirety of his professional career with the Rays.
Colleagues knew him so well that they harangued him for the tiniest habits, such as consuming his meals at lightning speed. “I wish I knew (why),” he said with a laugh. “It’s not intentional.” After night games, it wasn’t unusual for Bloom and Neander to sit at a bar on the club level concourse, tapping the keg to serve themselves. And after games on Sunday afternoon, when young fans were allowed to run the bases, it wasn’t unusual to see Bloom and Neander mingling on the field with their families. “It was a really good mutual working relationship, professional relationship, and also personal relationship,” Neander said. “We had a lot of common interests and desires and ambitions. … In some ways it blurs the lines between work and play. You have a lot of common interests and you enjoy the time you spend together.”
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Yet, given the Rays’ standing as the game’s incubator of thinkers, it seemed understood that those times would be limited. “We certainly prepared for the possibility,” Neander said. “We have been preparing for it.” In 2018, Bloom had been a candidate when the Mets needed a general manager. Last offseason, with the Red Sox in a state of upheaval, they quietly approached Bloom, offering the reins of their baseball operations department. He was the only candidate.
The administrative building at JetBlue Park sits behind the faux Green Monster. It was here, near the glass doors at the entrance, that Bloom talked about the day-to-day unpredictability that is baseball. Those within it, he said, have no right to expect anything else. Though it is an off day, a few members of the coaching staff have come to work. Bloom offered a smile and a quick wave to each one. Among them was Ron Roenicke, the former bench coach who replaced Alex Cora after the manager was dismissed for his role in the Astros’ infamous sign-stealing scheme. It was yet another domino to fall in an offseason that has taken the shape of a never-ending test.
“I understand why people would say that,” Bloom said. “The thing that has really been great for me to see is, not only amongst our staff, but amongst our players, the professionalism that has been there, that if you didn’t know all these things were going on, you would not be able to tell by spending a day around these guys and watching them go through their workday. That’s not something to take for granted. It says a lot about the group.”
Bloom spoke often of “the group.” It is of particular importance to the Red Sox. Rather than import a slew of colleagues from the Rays, Bloom has meshed with a crop of executives that were already in place. Just as he had during his days in player development, where he learned a mindset that could be scaled-up to an entire organization, Bloom found himself once more working with a wide variety of people. Much of his transition has been spent building relationships.
“I think Chaim is very similar to me in this respect: so much of the satisfaction that I derive from this job is the people that I work with,” Friedman said earlier in the offseason, before he worked with Bloom on a trade for Betts. “And when you leave the comforts of that and go to another organization, early on that part is difficult in that you are meeting new people and for those relationships and that trust to be built, that takes time. It’s an organic process, and that is probably the most difficult aspect of making the transition. Talking to Chaim so far, there’s a lot of talent in place in the front office and he’s really enjoyed getting to know them and they’ve made it really comfortable for him.”
From his hiring until spring training, Bloom had spent time in Boston and St. Petersburg, where he still lives with his wife and two boys. His home is near Tropicana Field. It allowed him to make Shabbat with his wife and two boys on Friday nights before getting back to the ballpark for games. It was also close enough for Bloom to use the ballpark and its facilities. Of course, that perk went away when he left for the Red Sox, leaving him to secure a new membership to a local gym.
“I haven’t been around my family nearly as much as I normally would be or as much as I would like to be, and that’s been kind of difficult for everybody,” Bloom said. “At the end of this, we’re all going to be together up in Boston and so we’ve got that to look forward to.”
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The plan had been to move to Boston at the end of the school year. But in the meantime, with the pandemic shuttering the game in the middle of spring training, Bloom has remained with his family in St. Petersburg. It was the latest hurdle in an interminable offseason.
“Leaving a place that I’ve worked so hard to build for 15 years and where I cared about the people so much was a difficult thing to do,” Bloom said. “But that was going to be difficult regardless. This is such an exciting challenge, such a cool opportunity, something, that for me, made sense to do. Even with a lot of these ups and downs and a lot of these challenges, all of that is still true.”
(Photo: Jim Davis / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
