I don’t know Theo Epstein. Never met him. I’ve tried interviewing him a couple of times, but he never got back to me. Must have been busy. He’s a busy guy!
As for what keeps him busy these days, nobody really knows. He’s a senior adviser and minority owner of Fenway Sports Group. We all understand what that means … sort of. He used to work as a consultant for Major League Baseball, but he left that gig when moving over to FSG. What he does when he goes to work, though, is anyone’s guess.
I don’t know what he does. But I know what he’s done.
And Red Sox principal owner John Henry ought to let the man see if he can do it again.
While ownership clearly has been holding out hope that Craig Breslow‘s vision would bear fruit this summer, it’s just not happening. The 2026 Red Sox have shown tens of thousands of Scottish visitors in Boston what a dreadful baseball team looks like, scoring a grand total of four runs while getting swept at home by the Blue Jays this week. Instead of noting how far they are from the third wild card (6.5 games), it’s much easier to note how close they are to being dead last in the American League (a half-game up on the Angels, a franchise that has been irrelevant for 15 years). Much of this situation is a direct result of Breslow’s decision-making as chief baseball officer since the fall of 2023.
Breslow, quite simply, is not the guy.
And the thing is, Breslow wasn’t the guy when he was hired. He was woefully inexperienced, but with seemingly nobody wanting to take the job, Breslow was the best the organization could do. Ten people said “thanks but no thanks” when offered an opportunity to take over the Red Sox. Breslow, the 11th option, said, “Sure.”
Whatever it was that kept people away — the financial parameters put in place by Henry, the way Chaim Bloom got a bit of a raw deal in his brief tenure, the way Dave Dombrowski was dumped less than a year after winning a World Series, the ever-changing “philosophies” of ownership — it became clear that what was once one of the premier jobs in all of sports had fallen off most qualified individuals’ wish lists.
And now, a few years later, the job is inarguably less desirable.
That’s why it has to be Theo. There’s nobody else but Theo. Sure, he’s an adult, and a professional, and a capital B Businessman, but the Red Sox are still the team
