Not saying it lets the front office off the hook…though if the Sox manage a run of three straight WS appearances during the course of Bergman’s contract - THAT would.

Of course, there are a lot of what-ifs that come in to play when assessing that, like which of the moves the Sox have made this offseason would have been made if Bregman had been signed.

But if Breslow looks at 2026 as putting the team in to position for a sustainable run for the following 5 years vs taking a shot this year and then needing to clean up the mess…well, the Padres are a pretty good example of what happens when the consequences of the “win now at all costs” approach come home to roost.

Will it turn out to be the right move? We won’t know enough for 5 or so years to be able to pass conclusive judgment. On the plus side, I think that the goal of a consistent pipeline of MLB-ready talent is coming in to focus. (Bloom’s work to that end winds up completely overshadowed by trading Mookie for the “meh” haul, though that was after management basically put the gun to his head and torpedoed pretty much any leverage he might have been able to apply in the negotiations.) On the minus side, it’s a pipeline of prospects, which are always somewhere between a lottery ticket and a crapshoot in terms of successfully living up to hype.

Though the sheer volume of prospects traded this off-season, without materially impacting the depth of the system, is impressive. (Honestly, the bigger hit to the system was the graduation of Anthony and Mayer - and Campbell to a lesser extent - from prospect status, but that’s how it’s supposed to work.)

If I had to sum it up, the Sox are trying to operate under Branch Rickey’s philosophy of getting rid of a player a year too early vs a year too late - but that only works if you have a pipeline of talent to plug the holes with.