The Chicago Cubs will have to navigate this upcoming offseason without one of their coveted executives.
They are officially losing their assistant general manager Craig Breslow to the Boston Red Sox as he has been hired to head up their baseball operations.
It was previously reported that Breslow was the clear frontrunner to be offered this job after a round of interviews.
Now, Alex Speier and Michael Silverman of The Boston Globe are reporting that he has accepted the offer.
Breslow first joined the Cubs in 2019 and worked his way up the front office ladder into becoming the director of pitching and special assistant to president of baseball operations Theo Epstein.
He became assistant GM in 2021 and held that role until the Red Sox hired him away.
Breslow has a deep connection with that franchise.
He grew up in Connecticut and then spent two separate stints with Boston during his playing days that saw him win a championship in 2013.
There were at-least eight other candidates who interviewed for the job with several others turning it down.
Breslow has an existing relationship in place with manager Alex Cora, who was his teammate on the Red Sox in 2006 and 2007.
Once the hiring becomes official, he will be in charge of deciding whether to hire a second-ranking front office member, like a general manager, to work underneath him.
Chicago will need to figure out how to replace Breslow within their own organization.
He was involved in overseeing pitching and pitching development, an area that increasingly improved under his control.
With so many talented young arms in their farm system, they'll need to find someone to continue the development that Breslow put in place.
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