LOVERRO: Green-eyed Red Sox ready to roll it like the Nationals?

OPINION:

You think maybe Boston Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow was a little jealous watching his former mentee having all this fun down in Washington running his little baseball experiment with the Nationals?

His former assistant general manager, Paul Toboni, has a team full of young, willing subjects, with Blake Butera, a manager with no major league clubhouse experience, a coaching staff who looked like they still get carded in bars, running drills and meetings and using all sorts of high-tech devices without pushback.

Maybe Breslow saw that and said, “I’ll have what he’s having.”

So, with a Boston team struggling with a 10-17 record, Breslow fired Alex Cora, one of the most respected managers in all of baseball who led the Red Sox to the 2018 World Series championship and a veteran coaching staff led by franchise icon Jason Varitek and replaced them with a manager with no major league dugout experience and a coaching staff closer to drinking legal age than Social Security.

Breslow, who reportedly was ready to hire Toboni as the Boston GM before Toboni took the job as president of baseball operations with Washington this winter, wanted to rid himself of old-school non-believers.

“He wanted to fire everybody who was here before he got here,” a source told The Athletic. 

Breslow inherited Cora, who favored a more traditional approach to team building and managing. But, according to CBS Sports, the new emphasis under Breslow on metrics, roster flexibility, depth and matchups, plus reduced spending, frustrated the manager. Cora would use the phrase “the roster is the roster” during press conferences to signal his dissatisfaction, CBS reported.

Breslow downplayed any conflict with Cora. “Characterizing the relationship as a power struggle is unfair,” Breslow said. “I have looked at these roles as a partnership. … Ultimately, this is about needing to do everything we possibly can to give ourselves the best 135 games (to go).”

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Cora was paid like a traditional manager with a strong voice — last year he was signed to a three-year $27.5 million contract extension, with a veteran coaching staff paid well. I can pretty much guarantee that Cora’s replacement, interim manager Chad Tracy, the team’s former Triple-A manager at Worchester, with no major league experience as a player or manager, isn’t making $7 million a year.

Cora’s biggest sin was that he had the dreaded “E” tattooed on his forehead — experience. Save for a few organizations, experience is a curse in today’s game. If there was a war going on in baseball management over the past decade or so between veteran baseball people and the young numbers geeks, well, the geeks have won and they’re not taking prisoners. If your mind is burdened by knowledge, it’s a problem for the young front office executives who now run many of the teams in baseball. They want a clean slate to follow their directives.

In Washington, Toboni, 35, created that clean slate. He got rid of many of those who wore the Scarlet “E” and replaced them with those who would buy into the program — like his manager, the 33-year-old Butera, whose only dugout experience was four years in the low minor leagues, where he was named Manager of the Year and won two league championships.

When Toboni hired Butera, he said, “I just think we want someone that is aligned with our values and has those great leadership traits that I think can really push that group forward.”

They certainly fit the values of the Nationals’ owners, the Lerners, because experience costs money, and the Lerners traditionally don’t like to spend money.

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Toboni’s reaction was curious when he was asked upon his hiring about the Lerners recent track record of frugality. “I’m not trying to purposely be vague here, but I’ll say that I just feel very supported in the role,” Toboni said. “I can’t tell you when or how it’s going to happen, but I feel supported.”

I think Toboni was fine not spending money on any free agents this year, save for their low-cost, low-risk pitching additions like Zack Littell (one year, $7 million), Foster Griffin (one year, $5.5 million) and Miles Mikolas (one year, $2.5 million). Veteran free agents from other organizations raise questions about new ways to do things and could have influence in a young clubhouse.

Toboni has been free to implement his program among this young group of players seemingly without question, as they publicly have bought in.

That will have to change, at some point, if the Nationals do hope to compete for championships again, as they did from 2012 to 2019. But for now, the Lerners are likely pleased with their low-cost product, and why not? What Toboni has done seems to be working in the early days of the season and the minor league organization has been getting good reviews. But it is very early.

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Then again, one way to measure its success may be at the box office. The Nationals, who were near the bottom of attendance last year, have fallen further in these early days of the 2026 season, averaging just 22,094 per game, a decrease of more than 4.000 fans per game, the largest drop in baseball.

Boston, though, is not Washington.

They take their baseball in Boston far more seriously, with intense and unforgiving media scrutiny.

Last week, after the Red Sox housecleaning, someone rented a plane to fly over Fenway Park with a banner urging owner John Henry to sell the team.

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In Washington, a flyover by the 94th Fighter Squadron all pulling “Sell the team” banners seems warranted. 

Instead, they have raised the white flag and surrendered to Toboni, who left the turmoil of change behind in Boston to find peace and love in Washington.

• Catch Thom Loverro on “The Kevin Sheehan Show” podcast.