The Red Sox are only three games back of a playoff spot as we hit the middle of August despite Chaim Bloom calling them “underdogs” after the trade deadline.
Boston lost four straight immediately following the deadline but the Sox have rattled off five wins in their last seven games to keep pace in the wild-card race.
World Series champion and longtime Boston Red Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon blasted Bloom and had praise for Alex Cora while appearing on Audacy’s original “The Bret Boone Podcast” this week.
“The great thing about the game now is with the wild card you really have a chance, every team still has a chance,” Papelbon said (12:12 in player above). “The Red Sox have done absolutely nothing to make them any better. If you’re in the hunt for the postseason and you need a whole lot more and you don’t go get anything, what does that tell you as a player?”
While the Red Sox didn’t sell off any of their potential trade chips, Bloom also didn’t really do much to add to the club with Chris Sale and Trevor Story returning from injury.
“You do not win a championship or you do not go far in the postseason without management having your back, not only in the media but on the team,” Papelbon continued. “If you don’t have front office, staff, and players all protecting each other – having each other's back, trying to do something special – you just don’t win.”
Bloom was merely looking at his team’s playoff chances and may have thought he was being realistic, but his comments probably didn’t sit well in the clubhouse.
“If your general manager is saying you’re underdogs and why should you add on, how do you think everyone else feels around here?” Papelbon said. “So to me, the statement says everything, and that puts the mood is ‘Oh well, we’re not going to win.’ So what else do you expect? If the general manager’s going to create that mood around here and in this city, why should you expect them to be in the playoffs?”
Papelbon isn’t too fond of how the general manager has handled things this season, but he loves how manager Alex Cora has fought alongside his team.
“Alex Cora, to me, has done the most amazing job of any manager this year given what he’s had to work with,” Papelbon said. “The amount of shuffling that he has had to do this year.
“They got guys coming up from the minor leagues I got to get briefed on. Who’s this guy today? Who’s this guy tomorrow? I don’t even know who these guys are, some of them. His job, to me, has been excruciatingly hard, and, to me, the front office has made it that way.”
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