With the conclusion of the 2025 season, teams around the league have begun to turn their attention to offseason staffing changes. The Orioles are known to be looking for second-hand orders from Mike Elias, president of baseball business, while the Nationals are looking for a successor to Mike Rizzo and have begun contacting potential candidates. Red Sox also appears to be joining Fray’s search for talented talent at the front desk, as Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow will “prioritize” finding General Motors as his second class at the Red Sox front desk after his first two years in Boston.
It wasn’t surprising that Breslow’s search for second place. Breslow reviewed the Red Sox’s front desk during the organization’s tenure, which delayed his decision to find a second order, as it must involve the work of evaluating internal candidates. However, the audit ended last year and the Red Sox still did not hire GM in the 2025 campaign. The Red Sox did hire Taylor Smith as assistant general manager last winter, but that made Smith one of several assistant general managers in the organization. When Smith hired, there was speculation that maybe Smith was brought into the assistant to take over the responsibility of assistant General Motors Paul Toboni, who was then regarded as the top internal candidate for the GM role.
However, there is no such promotion that ends up giving Toboni, and now Breslow is preparing to hire GM this winter, it is unclear whether he (or any other insider Red Sox person) will be considered a candidate for the job. At the time, Toboni was seen as a candidate for a few vacancies around the game and promoting him could have been a way to keep him in the organization. Eventually, he stayed in the organization with the same title, but may now be a hot commodity on other club markets that want to add front offices.
Mark Feinsand of MLB.com wrote that Toboni is a candidate for the National Vacant General Motors job and will replace former head of baseball business Mike Rizzo. While the Red Sox will be able to offer Bonnie for the same title, there will be more responsibility in Washington as the Nationals General Manager is the club’s top baseball operation position. Of course, it must be noted that it is not clear whether Toboni has been asked to interview the position or whether he has been contacted at this time. Even so, Toboni is even considering the fact that he leads the organization’s baseball operations division, while his name has appeared in various other general managers in the league over the past few years, indicating that he has been well supported within the industry and can again be a candidate for various opportunities around the game.
It should be noted that Breslow’s talent pool could draw inspiration from his GM search, as the candidates he hired would not get the highest job in baseball surgery and would therefore naturally be smaller. While the Naths have been connected to names like Cubs GM Carter Hawkins, other organizations often prevent their executives from jumping ship for lateral movements. This means that anyone currently being the president of the organization’s baseball business (such as Hawkins) is unlikely to even be allowed to interview this work as Breslow’s right mobile phone.
Still, there are a lot of executives in the game assistant general manager role and other low-level positions, and if he wants to hire from outside the Red Sox, Breslow will consider these executives without much problem. Dodgers senior vice president Josh Byrnes and Rattlers assistant general manager Amiel Sawdaye are two other names related to the National GM search, and although they are not currently linked to the general manager job in Boston, they are both examples of executives who currently hold the position that doesn’t necessarily have to be interviewed by them.
