Craig Breslow, Red Sox plan to hire GM this offseason
With the 2025 season nearing its conclusion, teams around the league are beginning to turn their attention towards staffing changes during the offseason. The Orioles are known to be looking for a second-in-command for president of baseball operations Mike Elias, while the Nationals are looking for the successor to Mike Rizzo and have already begun contacting possible candidates. It seems the Boston Red Sox will also be joining the fray looking for front office talent, as Rob Bradford of Audacy Sports writes that chief baseball officer Craig Breslow will be “prioritize” finding a GM to serve as his second-in-command in the Red Sox front office this year after going the first two years of his tenure in Boston without one.
It’s hardly a surprise that Breslow would be looking for a number two. Breslow conducted an audit of the Red Sox front office early in his tenure with the organization, a decision which postponed his search for a second-in-command as it would necessarily involve evaluating the work of in-house candidates. That audit concluded last year, however, and the Red Sox still entered the 2025 campaign without hiring a GM. The Red Sox did hire Taylor Smith away from the Rays for an assistant GM role last winter, but that made Smith one of several assistant GMs already in the organization. At the time of Smith’s hire, there was some speculation that perhaps Smith was being brought into the fold to take over the responsibilities of assistant GM Paul Toboni, who was at the time viewed as the top internal candidate for the GM role.
No such promotion ultimately came to pass for Toboni, however, and now that Breslow is gearing up to hire a GM this winter it’s unclear if he (or any other internal Red Sox personnel, for that matter) will be considered as candidates for the job or not. At the time, Toboni was viewed as a candidate for a handful of vacancies around the game and promoting him could have served as a way to keep him in the organization. He ultimately remained in the organization with his same title, but now could once again be a hot commodity on the market for other clubs looking to add to their front offices.
Paul Toboni is candidate for vacant Washington Nationals GM job
Mark Feinsand of MLB.com writes that Toboni is a candidate for the Nationals’ vacant GM job, where he would replace former head of baseball operations Mike Rizzo. While the Red Sox would be able to offer Toboni that same title, it would come with significantly more responsibility in Washington given that the GM of the Nationals is the club’s top baseball operations position. Of course, it must be noted that it’s unclear whether Toboni has been asked to interview for the position or if he’s even been contacted at this point. Even so, the fact that Toboni is even under consideration to lead an organization’s baseball operations department, in conjunction with his name coming up in various other GM searches around the league in previous years, suggests that he’s well-regarded within the industry and could once again be a candidate for various opportunities around the game.
It should be noted that Breslow’s pool of talent from which he can draw from in his GM search will naturally be smaller given that the candidate he hires will not be given the top job in baseball operations. While the Nats have been connected to names such as Cubs GM Carter Hawkins, other organizations will typically block their executives from jumping ship for a lateral move. That means anyone who is currently the #2 of an organization with a president of baseball operations, such as Hawkins, would be unlikely to even be permitted to interview for the job as Breslow’s right-hand man.
Still, there are plenty of executives around the game in assistant GM roles and other lower-level positions who Breslow would be able to consider without much issue if he would like to hire from outside the Red Sox organization. Dodgers senior VP Josh Byrnes and Diamondbacks assistant GM Amiel Sawdaye are two other names reportedly connected to the Nationals’ GM search, and while they haven’t been connected to Boston’s GM job at this point they’re both examples of executives who currently hold positions that would not necessarily preclude them from being interviewed for the role.
Golden Knights Teeter on Salary Cap Brink: Is Their Superteam a House of Cards?
Vegas Golden Knights fans might not like what Bleacher Reports will say about their cap situation. But it's a harsh reality they must deal with.
Kelly McCrimmon isn't one to shy away from spending money. He's acquired players such as Tomas Hertl, Jack Eichel, and Mitch Marner in an attempt to win another Stanley Cup. All that sounds great, right?
Well, yeah. C.R.E.A.M.
Cash rules everything around me.
When you're trying to assemble a superteam that angers the entire NHL, that's the goal. McCrimmon knows he needs the best players in his lineup, whether it's the first line or the third. This isn't a team filled with mid-line guys from the Pacific Northwest, you know.
Of course, there's a side effect to that. That comes with having one of the roughest salary cap situations for 2025-26. According to Bleacher Report, Vegas has the second-worst cap situation going into next season.
"The Golden Knights have been synonymous with pushing the boundaries of the salary cap over the past few seasons. That they were able to take advantage of the salary cap disappearing in the postseason allowed them to make the best use of LTIR to add more talent. While the new NHL CBA will make that a thing of the past, Vegas is sitting near $104 million in salaries ahead of training camp according to the cap sites. That's a superstar player amount of money over the $95.5 million cap!"Joe Yerdon
Only the Florida Panthers finished higher than the Vegas Golden Knights. Of course, they're also the back-to-back Stanley Cup champions.
How bad is it for the Vegas Golden Knights cap-wise in 2025-26?
First, having $20.375 million in cap space sounds like there's some room to work with. You could bring in some solid depth guys and add fourth-line players for your group. However, there's a catch.
Both Jack Eichel and Pavel Dorofeyev will be free agents after this season. Eichel will be of the unrestricted variety, while Dorofeyev will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights. Those two deals alone could eat most of the cap space and leave McCrimmon constricted.
That leaves the depth piece conundrum. Eichel and Dorofeyev aren't the only free agents roaming around after this season. There's also Brandon Saad, Reilly Smith, Jeremy Lauzon, Colton Sissons, and Ben Hutton. All these players are unrestricted free agents after 2025-26, leaving a massive depth gap in the lineup.
You must also account for Akira Schmid, who's a restricted free agent with arbitration rights like Dorofeyev. With Eichel's deal potentially reaching $13 million or higher, how can you manage that cap space without making a sacrifice or two?
Kelly McCrimmon has shown that he can make the pieces fit
McCrimmon must also contend with not having prospects to fill in the voids for the Golden Knights. Trevor Connelly's dealing with a leg injury and the defenseman group doesn't inspire much confidence in bringing any players up. Not having players you can bring in on cheaper deals makes the salary cap situation worse.
However, the general manager has made it work before. In fact, one can point to the maneuvering to get Marner to Vegas. That included trading Nicolas Hague to Nashville, where the Predators paid the defenseman $5.5 million AAV until 2030. Imagine if McCrimmon struck a deal here and struck out on an elite winger.
That's an alternate universe that Golden Knights fans don't want to see. It's like watching your hated rivals, the Edmonton Oilers, win the Stanley Cup. That's something no Golden Knights fan wants to see.
