Ort Myers, Florida Craig Breslow received the phone call that transformed his life, propelling him along a professional path that has led him to become the Boston Red Sox’s top baseball executive while he was a Minnesota Twin in 2008.
The caller expelled him from school.
Sort of.
“The dean of admissions at NYU School of Medicine called me and expressed his concern over how long it had been since I had set foot in a classroom,” Breslow said in a statement. “They had granted me permission to defer my admission, but it had been five years and I was still pitching. I had always planned to attend medical school and become a doctor or researcher, but I’ve had to find other methods to keep involved with the medical community.”
That’s because he’s been involved in the baseball community ever since, first as a lefthanded reliever who spent a dozen seasons in the majors with seven different clubs, three of which included the Twins twice, and then as a front office official after retiring.
And that career path almost brought him to Minnesota.
“He wasn’t sure he was going to play anymore [after Toronto released him in 2018], so he sent me a list of things he thought he could help with, and it was impressive.” “We talked to him about a pitching role,” said Derek Falvey, the Twins’ president of baseball operations. “I also had him talk to Rocco, believing he may be a good fit on the field. But our pitching rotation was full by then, and I sensed he felt he could have a bigger effect with a squad that hadn’t been together as long.”
He found one with the Cubs, where he spent four seasons overseeing pitcher development and earned a reputation for innovative analytics and technological applications. The Red Sox were so delighted that they hired him in October to run their entire baseball organization.
“He’s really brilliant and always inquiring. “His curiosity will help him improve,” Falvey said. “We signed him for our bullpen in 2017, and he used technology and information in the same way other teams did. He was ahead of the game in terms of determining the shape of his pitches and how to get there.”
In fact, the winter before returning to the Twins, Breslow purchased one of the first Rapsodo pitch-tracking computers that every MLB team now uses and began monitoring his own pitches, attempting to compensate for what age was taking in athleticism.
“It was clear I was entering the final chapters of my playing career and needed to make pretty significant adjustments in order to evolve with the game,” Breslow said in a statement. “I sought to reinvent myself with a lower arm slot, embracing a different pitching profile and repertoire. Derek was excited by it and signed me.”
Falvey stated that Breslow “was one of the first guys ever to send us data from his own workouts so we could assess where he was.”I remember thinking it was fascinating that a guy would really buy the equipment and use it to make modifications. He recognized the pitching axis and the distinction between spring rate and spin efficiency. He was using terminology like induced vertical break, and he really stood out as someone who understood what we were attempting to do.”
Leave a Reply