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Sports Pulse
Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom apologized for how he handled calling up a minor league player despite the team knowing he had previously posted a homophobic tweet.
Last week, the Red Sox called up journeyman left-hander Matt Dermody to make a spot start against Cleveland. Dermody pitched four innings, giving up three earned runs on four hits Thursday in a 10-3 loss.
However, Dermody was called up despite the team knowing he posted, and then deleted, a homophobic tweet in 2021, prior to when the team signed him, according to MassLive. The team became aware of the tweet after signing Dermody, and met with him during spring training, MassLive reported.
Bloom told the outlet Dermody “didn’t realize that his words would be hurtful” and knows he made a mistake. The team considered terminating Dermody’s contract, but Bloom said discussions with him led to keeping him with the team. The move was met with backlash.
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Red Sox missed additional offensive tweets, team says
Since Bloom told MassLive Dermody understood his actions, the chief baseball officer told the Boston Globe the organization became aware of additional offensive social media posts made by Dermody, and the team missed it during its initial investigation.
“We pride ourselves on doing the right due diligence so that we can have the right conversations around these things. We realized as this was unfolding (after the callup) that a process that is normally pretty robust missed some things,” said Bloom. “There were other concerning things on social media. We usually don’t miss these types of things. In this case we did.”
Bloom didn’t say if the team had known about the other social media activity, would Dermody have been released. The team is still investigating the situation, but Bloom expressed regret about how he handled the matter.
“We didn’t have all the conversations we should have here. That’s something we can’t undo. It happened and we really regret it. I really regret it, because it caused pain,” said Bloom. “I do believe people can learn and grow and forgiveness should be possible. But that requires having the right conversations and in this particular case, we just didn’t put ourselves in a position to have them.”
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Who is Matt Dermody?
Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 28th round of the 2013 MLB Draft from the University of Iowa, Dermody made his major league debut in 2016 and played with the team in 2017. Dermody signed a minor league deal with the Chicago Cubs in 2020 and made one appearance in the majors before he was designed for assignment.
In 2021, Dermody played for the Saitama Seibu Lions of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, and signed with Cubs again in 2022. He made one appearance before he was released and played in the KBO League in South Korea. He then signed a minor league deal with the Red Sox prior to this season. In 31 career MLB games, Dermody has a 5.74 ERA.
After his start in Cleveland, Dermody was designated for assignment and was assigned to Triple A Worcester Sunday after clearing waivers. Dermody is scheduled to start for Worcester Wednesday.
