Craig Breslow's 3 Red Sox All-Stars are great for July. Now it's time to work on October

New York Times

16 hours ago

Craig Breslow isn't much for wisecracks. He doesn't jab people in the chest and say, 'I told you so.' And if the chief baseball officer of the Boston Red Sox has ever done any strutting, it has taken place in the privacy of his home or his Fenway Park chambers, not in front of the television cameras.
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On Sunday, however, Breslow could have been excused had he done all those things and then some. Turns out his offseason roster building has produced not one, not two, but three players who have been named to the American League All-Star team. The starry Boston cast includes left-handed ace Garrett Crochet, closer Aroldis Chapman and third baseman Alex Bregman, three men who were playing for other teams last season.
True, Bregman is jussssssst about ready to return to the lineup as he recovers from the right quad strain that has kept him out of the lineup since May 23, and perhaps there are fans in other cities crowing that their hometown hero would have been a more deserving choice. But that's a story for another day. What matters here is Breslow and his three All-Stars for the 2025 Red Sox, and that's the narrative we'll be exploring today.
Breslow met with reporters on Sunday at Washington's Nationals Park to discuss the All-Star picks, with NESN carrying the taped interview after the Sox had emerged with a 6-4 victory over the Nats to complete a three-game sweep. Breslow had done the interview before the game with the understanding that the selections would be embargoed until later in the day.
Asked if he takes pride in having 'hit' on Crochet, Chapman and Bregman, Breslow said, 'For sure. And, you know, I think the credit starts with the players. They've shown that they're All-Star-caliber players before they got here,' and then he credited the coaching staff and 'everyone who's involved in the acquisition process,' which of course is a very Breslow thing to say. (We must pray, however, that 'the acquisition process' never replaces 'the Hot Stove' in offseason baseball jargon.)
Our 2025 All-Stars. 🥹 pic.twitter.com/VRUBSvjaf0
— Red Sox (@RedSox) July 6, 2025
I kid about the strutting, but, yeah, Breslow could have had some fun with all this by saying (with a wink) something along the lines of, 'Hey, I guess I got lucky.' Whatever. The fact is that Breslow headed up a mighty fine offseason acquisition process, and he deserves plaudits for that.
So now what? We can agree that MLB's All-Star Game isn't the summertime be-all and end-all that it used to be, but it's still a pretty good pageant. For instance, actual defense is played in this sport's All-Star Game. Beyond that, it's a safe bet more Red Sox fans will be watching than if Boston had been limited to the standard, obligatory lone representative.
And if the actual game doesn't rock your boat, there's still much at stake here. As it happens, Selection Sunday (yeah, yeah, so sue me, NCAA basketball people) fell on the same day the Red Sox had taken care of business by completing their sweep of the Nationals. The Sox have now won five of their last seven games to again climb above the accursed .500 plateau (46-45), and they have a chance to fatten up with a three-game set against the horrible Colorado Rockies before the Tampa Bay Rays pull into Fenway for a four-game series, which will mean big-boy baseball.
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What this means is that the Red Sox are positioning themselves to be worthy of Breslow adding, not subtracting, as the July 31 trade deadline approaches. Now, if this is the part where frustrated Red Sox fans want to do a what's-the-big-deal moan about baseball's expanded playoff format and what they see as the phoniness of competing for a wild-card spot, that's their right. But here's another way of looking at it: A) The Red Sox haven't been to the postseason since 2021, and B) baseball in October, even early October, can be really, really exciting.
If the Red Sox don't make the playoffs this season, that'll be four straight years without October baseball, other than the occasional regular-season game that spills over from September. The last time the Red Sox went that long without postseason baseball was from 1976 to 1985, and that was in the old days when only the four division winners got invites.
Nobody complained when the post-pandemic Red Sox of 2021 surprisingly toppled the Yankees in what was then a one-game wild-card game, went on to beat the heavily favored Tampa Bay Rays in the Division Series and then took the Houston Astros to six games in the ALCS before being dismissed. Fenway was electric during Boston's 6-2 victory over the Yankees in the wild-card, and not just because the pregame included an appearance by the great Jerry Remy, who would pass away just 25 days later.
These 2025 Red Sox don't have Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling are not walking through that door. And while we're at it, I miss the calming presence of the late Tim Wakefield. Moreover, customers have the right to ask if the Red Sox will ever again be 'damn the torpedoes' mega spenders. To use that word swagger yet again, the Boston baseball community would be better served if the Red Sox returned to the days of organizational swagger.
It's not unfair to ask if the Red Sox Way has turned into an annual mission to build a team that's just good enough to compete. That's a big picture discussion. But in 2025, they owe their fans a playoff run, which is why it should scare the customers that Chapman's name keeps popping up as a trade commodity, the idea being that if the Sox lose four in a row he be dealt to a team that thinks it's one shutdown closer away from getting to the postseason.
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'I've been on teams that have bought and I've been on teams that have sold (at the trade deadline),' said Crochet, per NESN, after allowing two runs over five innings on Sunday to improve his record to 9-4. 'I think this time of year, yeah, it's really huge for that. You just want to do as good a job as you can as a clubhouse and as a unit to make sure that ownership knows there's a reason to buy in. I think right now we're giving them good enough reasons.'
Crochet on making his second #AllStarGame ⭐ ⬇️
"As a whole, I think as a Red Sox I've done nothing but improve… it's an honor just to represent this organization at an event of that caliber." 💪 pic.twitter.com/DWZkofIB1o
— NESN (@NESN) July 6, 2025
Breslow has already made his for-the-future move by moving Rafael Devers and his contract to the San Francisco Giants. And remember, Breslow has posited that the move might make the Red Sox a better team this season. If he truly believes that, he needs to make the moves that make him right.
It's time for the acquisition process to get put back into play.