This is EXACTLY what Red Sox fans wanted to hear... Kinda

This is exactly what Red Sox fans have been waiting to hear from Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow. As on Tuesday in Las Vegas, Breslow finally said the thing Red Sox fans have been yelling about since April. As Breslow went on to say, quote, I think it's important to try and decouple. Are we getting the diagnosis or the rehab wrong, or do we need to make sure that communication with our players, with our staff internally, with the media externally is tightened up. Then the part fans actually wanted to hear, quote, we're going to evaluate all of those things this offseason and definitely recognize where some of the criticism is coming from. The criticism has two specific names attached to it. Garrett Crochet being the first one, the guy that was supposed to be the bona fide ace for this Red Sox team for the second consecutive year. He was expected to be back the moment he was eligible to come off of the injured list, and he was gone for more than five months. Roman Anthony called his injury nothing too serious, and then he missed the next 101 games. The ace of this Red Sox team in Garrett Crochet and the best young bat, someone that was just taken care of and extended for years going forward in this Sox organization, were both told it was something small and minor and both missed the majority of last regular season. So was it the medical staff getting the injuries wrong and diagnosing incorrectly or was it the front office telling the wrong story. Breslow just said the review will look at both. And the answer shapes what the team will look like in 2027 and also how the fan base is going to respect this organization as a whole. And Craig Breslow went further than just that one quote, saying the Red Sox are going to take, quote, a sweeping look at a number of our processes. Going on to say how injuries get diagnosed, how they get communicated, and how the rehab protocols get set. All of it on the table this winter. The biggest word in these quotes is decouple because he's describing two very completely different problems here. If it's the diagnose, it's a medical problem. A player rehabs the wrong injury, comes back at the wrong timeline, and then he gets hurt again. If the diagnosis is right and everyone is being told something different because of the organization wanting to paint a different narrative, that is a trust problem and that's what it felt like all of Red Sox Nation was dealing with last year with both Crochet and more importantly Roman Anthony. The first one can cost you games, not just a few, but multiple, hundreds of games at that. The second one costs you credibility, and this front office right now being led by Breslow, Sam Kennedy, and various others doesn't have a lot of that to spare right now. This is the same season Alex Cora was fired after going 10-17 to start, and five coaches went out the door with him. The dugout and the clubhouse already got a huge shakeup, but no one was named on the medical side of things, but now that part of the building, that part of the organization is rightfully under a microscope. To figure out which of these two problems the Red Sox and specifically Craig Breslow currently have, you have to go back to April and start with the ace of this Red Sox team, Garrett Crochet. On April 25th, in Baltimore, Garrett Crochet threw six innings. It was his last regular season start of the year. Through the first six games, his ERA was sitting at 6.3, a long way away from the pitcher Boston traded for to anchor its rotation. And not only just that, but it was vastly different from what we witnessed the year prior as Crochet was the runner-up, only behind Tarek Skubal in the AL Cy Young race. And now looking back, and I understand hindsight is 20-20, the ERA might have been the first sign that something was off with Crochet. The Red Sox put Crochet on the 15-day IL with what they were calling left shoulder inflammation. On June 5th, the Red Sox moved him to the 60-day IL, and the short stint everyone expected was over. Days before that move, he had a setback in his rehab, and it was called very minor. Crochet himself said later that his shoulder was keeping him out longer than anyone expected. By the end, the description had turned into fatigue in his left shoulder capsule, and he didn't come off the injured list until September 29th. By our count, that's 135 Red Sox games without their expected ace. That is a long, long time for someone that was expected to be the reason this rotation could win in October. And then we all remember what happened. They handed him the ball in relief of game two of the wildcard series against the Yankees with the season on the line. He didn't record an out in three hits. Four runs later, his night was over. After the season, Breslow said the imaging showed, quote, some irritation and strain to the shoulder. So Crochet's story is a medical one, an injury that kept changing names, a rehab that kept moving the day of return, and an ace who came back to get no outs in an elimination game. Now for Roman Anthony, that's the other problem Craig Breslow mentioned. It's the one where the team says something out loud that might not be all that accurate. On May 4th in Detroit, Anthony came out of that game with what the Red Sox listed as a right wrist sprain. He went on the 10-day IL and he told reporters it was nothing too serious. On May 22nd, team president Sam Kennedy went on the radio and pushed back on reports that it was a tear. About a week later, Anthony described a partially torn ligament in his ring finger and confirmed it is a tear. It is not a sprain. The player, Roman Anthony, who at the time I believe was still 21 years of age, corrected the team president in public. On June 11th, Kennedy went back on WEEI and owned it saying, I need to own up to my mistake. Then quote, I shouldn't be sitting here talking about a sprain. A sprain is a tear, end of quote. He even added quote, that's on me 100%. That's the communication problem in one sentence. The scan said one thing and the public heard something completely different. Anthony's timeline kept stretching from there. On June 28th, the Sox moved him to the 60-day IL. He didn't start a rehab assignment until August 18th in Portland and then moved up to AAA a week later. In all, Anthony missed 101 games and didn't play for the Sox again until August 30th. He finished with just 55 games played for a player this lineup is supposed to be built around. Even when he played, his OPS was .735 and nobody outside that building knows how much of Then came the wildcard series. After game one, an MRI showed new muscle strains in his right wrist on top of the original injury, and he was off the roster for game two. In early October, the word from the team was that no surgery was planned or even under consideration. So the Red Sox get eliminated in two games in just demoralizing and embarrassing fashion against the lifelong rival the New York Yankees and their ace collected no outs in what felt like a rushed back effort to get him on the field and their star offensive player Roman Anthony or at least supposed to be star player Roman Anthony wasn't even on the roster. Do remember if you've been watching these Red Sox Digest videos and want to continue to stay up to date remember to subscribe to the channel. We are so very close to our goal of 8,000 subscribers and we can't do it without you guys. Now if it was only Garrett Crochet and Roman Anthony it would be considered a bad break but it wasn't just those two names. Garrett Whitlock who was labeled and has been known as one of the best setup man in all of baseball, pitched through leg pain in the second half of the season. Imaging after the playoffs found a fractured tibia and neither the team nor Whitlock expected it. So we had a reliever, one of the best relievers in baseball, pitching in the postseason with a broken bone in his leg and nobody caught it until the season was actually over. I understand if he's good enough to go, you want that guy out there because of how good he actually is. But we saw how things looked, especially towards the end of that series in the wild card. He was not himself. And if you have to, if there's pain for that long, that is that substantial, there has to be some form of imaging that has to be done. The rotation Breslau rebuilt last winter got hit too. Johan Oviedo spent 180 days on the injured list. Cutter Crawford, still coming back from right wrist surgery, never pitched in a game for Boston. Add it all up and the Red Sox spent 2,016 days on the injured list this year. By our count from MLB's transaction log, that's 7th most of 30 MLB teams, about 275 more days than the median team in baseball. The San Francisco Giants lost 2,548 days, so the total isn't what makes Boston different. What makes Boston different is the fact that it was three of the biggest names and all of the injuries all started out sounding extremely different from what they ended up actually being. And people noticed, and they noticed early and often. As on Talk Sox, the question was, how is it possible the medical staff can't diagnose its own players, not even accurately, But even relatively accurately. Sam Kennedy did apologize, which covers the Roman Anthony side of things. Breslow's review covers the whole process, which is why splitting the question in two matters so much. But then again... Again, Does Kennedy's apology really cover for this or does he still need to be held accountable? I think he does because being lied to as a member of a fan base about someone in Roman Anthony who is as impactful and as important as he is going to be and should be to this team, how are you going to lie? How are you going to fabricate what the injury actually is and the severity of that injury? If the doctors were right and the messaging was wrong, you fix how you talk about those injuries. You don't beat around the bush. You don't try to paint a narrative that may be better sounding in your mind that might not actually be accurate when it comes down to the real diagnosis, which we all know is going to come out and be true at some point. If it's the doctors who were wrong, you're talking about changing the people in the medical room. And up to this point in winter, There's already a full board of injuries to judge the Reds. Red Sox on. Breslow went through the injury updates in Las Vegas last week per the Boston Globe. Crochet's ramping up and starting shortly after an early offseason spent making sure the shoulder is actually strong. Now that update matters nearly the most because a healthy crochet is the difference between this rotation having an ace and not having one after the departure of Sonny Gray this offseason to free agency. If Crochet goes out in spring and he continues to to ramp up and progress the review gets off to If the ramp up does slip at all, every timeline surrounding an injury, regardless of the player, is going to continue to get questioned by the fan base and by other teams and by the MLB commission's office and everyone involved. Anthony, on the other hand, is still a step behind. He'll be evaluated again in the next few weeks, then a strengthening program. And only after that does he start hitting. Breslow also said Anthony's diagnosis have not really changed And after the year we just went through, this is the line fans are going to hold Craig Breslow to when it comes to injury updates. Caleb Durbin had two surgeries, one on his left pinky and one on his right foot, and he's still progressing as expected. Curtis Mead is coming back. from a left wrist fracture, Whitlock from the fractured tibia, and both are progressing as expected too. Casas hasn't played a game since he ruptured his patellar tendon in May of 2025, and he had a wrist surgery this August on top of it. Breslow said the club will do everything it can to get him on the field and keep him on the field. Tanner Houck went on the 60-day injured list on February 10th and didn't come off until September 27th, the last day of the regular season. On November 2nd, Cutter Crawford, Justin Slayton, and Johan Oviedo all came off the 60-day IL. But I'm here to tell you, don't read too much into those updates and expectations. And the reason being is because... progressing as expected means a whole lot less at this stage after the year we all just went through as fans of this organization because of everything that continued to change and I'm not saying that injuries don't get worse and things don't always go to plan but when you are being lied to like Sam Kennedy did to this organization and required a 21 year old Fresh into the big leagues to step out and actually confirm what is going on, there is going to be major red flags and major speculation surrounding every update this Sox organization gives. I will say these updates that Craig Breslow did just give us surrounding the injury update and the injured list for this Red Sox team is the beginning of a new test, into a new season. And if he, if things go the way they did last year, I don't even want to speculate on how things are going to go. So what are we watching for? What can we go off of? We're waiting for Crochet to ramp up and Anthony's re-evaluation over the next few weeks and whether those updates still hold true once February actually does arrive. So who worries you more heading into 2027? Garrett Crochet with his shoulder or Roman Anthony with his hand? Let me know down in the comments which of the two worry you more and I will see you guys on the next episode of Red Sox Digest. Thank you guys for watching.