Craig Breslow’s Wish List For Most Important Offseason of His Career

With this only being Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow’s third offseason on the job, it’s safe to say that this is, by far, the most important winter of his executive career.

With Boston advancing to the postseason for the first time since 2021 this past year, the expectations from fans and media are set for his organization to take yet another step forward in 2026.

Does that mean a division title? An ALCS appearance? Heck, what about the World Series?

It’s all on the table if this team adds the right pieces in the coming weeks and months.

From my vantage point, their needs, in order, are as follows:

- A high-end No. 2 starter

- A power bat

- One more consistent hitter in the mix, preferably with some power

I don’t care if these acquisitions come via trade or free agency, they just have to happen for this team to compete at a high level next season, and live up to their eighth-best odds to win the next Fall Classic.

Does my wish list match Breslow’s? He talked about what he plans to have his offseason shopping look like at the General Manager Meetings in Las Vegas on Monday.

Here’s what he said when asked about adding a power bat, via my pal Rob Bradford of WEEI:

"I don’t want to get so anchored to this idea that the only way to score runs is home runs. We showed that isn’t the case. That said, a disproportionate number of runs in the postseason are scored via the home run and that’s not something that we can ignore. And there’s just something about an at-bat in the middle of the lineup that forces another team to game-plan against it, that I think has a compounding effect on the rest of the roster. We didn’t slug nearly as much as I think we can or we will, and we’ll pursue opportunities to improve that. Free agency is one of them, trades are another. We lost Roman [Anthony], we lost [Wilyer Abreu] for significant stretches, and those are two guys who can hit the ball out of the park consistently.

"In a perfect world, I would suppose we would want to balance out the lineup a bit. That said, I think when you can hit the ball out of the park, it doesn’t really matter. I think we have found that lefties can use the wall and create a good offensive environment, righties who can pull the ball in the air can do the same thing. There are a number of different ways for us to improve our slug, but I think this idea that we can do more damage on balls on play is certainly a correct one."

While I’m not a native Breslow speaker, I can tell you from my loose understanding of the language that this means, “We want to add some power.”

The English translation for his thoughts on adding starting pitching this offseason was a bit more straight-forward:

"Last season, [Brayan] Bello played that role for a majority of the season. Lucas [Giolito] played that role for a majority of the season. Because of the depth that we’ve built up over the last couple of years, we feel pretty good about just overall starting pitching and numbers 3-ish through 10-ish and that’s not to take away from guys are certainly capable of doing more and more just to say I don’t think we’re going to spend a ton of time trying to add a No. 4 or a No. 5 starter. If we’re going to make a starting pitching addition, I think it should be somebody who can pitch at the front of a rotation and start a game for us.

"I think because we had so many conversations, even going back to the previous offseason and then through the trade deadline, we had a good idea that Garrett [Crochet] was someone we were going to spend some time on. This year, I anticipate some conversations will be extensions of what we discussed at the trade deadline, and others will be different. Teams are in different positions, whether that’s financially or competitively. I wouldn’t say you start anew, but you kind of recanvas the landscape and have initial phone calls in these meetings and you hope some of the conversations gain traction."

He has an Ivy League-way of explaining it, but me and Breslow are aligned.

How much Fenway Sports Group is willing to open up the piggy bank to help aid him in this effort is a whole other question.

Reporters both locally and nationally seem to believe this will be the offseason Boston decided to open up the checkbook, especially since it appears the team is “ready” to make a World Series push (eyes rolling into the back of my head while writing that, but we can get into that at some other point this offseason).

I remain dubious.

Tom Carroll is a contributor for Roundtable, with boots-on-the-ground coverage of all things Boston sports. He's a senior digital content producer for WEEI.com, and a native of Lincoln, RI.