Red Sox News & Links: The Inside Scoop On The Craig Breslow Hiring

We likely won’t hear from Craig Breslow himself until next Thursday’s press conference. At that point, hopefully we can shift to talking about actual offseason roster construction, but until then, expect to hear more details about the search process. This piece has a lot of inside info in that area, including confirmation that the final three candidates were Breslow, Thad Levine, and Neal Huntington. What happened to Eddie Romero? (Sean McAdam, MassLive)

We’re also starting to hear more about Breslow from his peers and former co-workers. Unsurprisingly, he’s getting a lot of praise, particularly from Jed Hoyer, formerly of the Red Sox and now of the Chicago Cubs. (Jen McCaffrey, The Athletic)

As for what we’ve heard from ownership so far, it’s, also unsurprisingly, exactly the type of glowing but bland PR-speak you would expect. (Emma Healy, Boston Globe)

With respect to potential departures, you can stop worrying about Jason Varitek (for now). While he was in consideration to take over the manager’s role for the San Francisco Giants, they ended up poaching Bob Melvin from the Padres instead. (Andrew Baggarly, The Athletic)

And here’s some great news: long-time radio voice of the Red Sox Joe Castiglione is officially a candidate for the Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award. Honestly, it’s somewhat surprising that he hasn’t been up for this award already, but for some reason I’ve always felt like Castiglione never got the type of national recognition afforded to other broadcasters like Ernie Harwell or Hawk Harrleson (a rather dubious Frick winner if you ask me) despite being a legacy announcer with a marquee team. (Peter Abraham, Boston Globe)