Chaim Bloom is juggling the responsibility of helping parent his young children during this coronavirus-induced seclusion while trying to catch up on a few episodes of the Netflix series "Ozark." He also has managed to send off texts and phone calls to the organization's players and coaches in an attempt to stay in tune with what everybody in the Red Sox family is up to.
He also continues to wait.
The Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer explained when appearing on OMF with Glenn Ordway, Lou Merloni and Christian Fauria that the anticipation of when Major League Baseball's ruling on the cheating allegations regarding the 2018 Red Sox haven't dissipated. What was thought to be an early Feburary ruling became late February and that led to Commissioner Rob Manfred stating he was eyeing releasing a report before Opening Day.
But, like so many other things, COVID-19 has thrown all timetables out the window.
"As you guys know, given that it is an ongoing process there obviously isn't much we can or should say about it. I would say we still are at the same point where we think everybody is to reserve judgment until we see what comes out of it," Bloom said.
"It is obviously frustrating that we don't have that outcome yet. But with what is going on in the last month I think it is understandable. I know the commissioner was on a timetable doing everything he could to wrap it up before the season. Sometime early to mid-March, the coronavirus took over pretty much of every ounce of everybody's available time and energy. I think we're still at that stage. We are hopeful at some point when everybody gets a chance to come up for air ... I know the commissioner has said the investigation is complete and it's a question of getting into the report. We're hopeful there is time to do that so we can all see the results and move forward. I think you have to cut everyone some slack given our industry and everybody has been dealing with something we really haven't faced before, something for which there is no road map and understandably it has dominated everyone's attention for the last month or so."
While Bloom said there has been no formal explanation from MLB, he is drawing the same conclusions most everyone else is: The coronavirus chaos has taken precedence.
"Not explicitly," Bloom said when asked if MLB has formally explained the reasoning for the delay in the report. "But just knowing the timetable that has been out there and seeing how things have unfolded I think it's a fair assumption just reading between the lines, what they have said publicly about the intended timetable. And just knowing how much they have been underwater with everything that is obviously taking much higher priority."
