There’s still some bad blood brewing between former Red Sox pitcher Matt Barnes and team executive Chaim Bloom.
On Tuesday, the new Marlins reliever seemingly shaded Bloom, who broke the news to Barnes in late January that he was being designated for assignment prior to his trade to Miami.
“I’m not mad and I don’t have any animosity toward the Red Sox organization because that organization represents so much more than who’s currently running it,” Barnes told The Boston Globe prior to a spring training contest between the Marlins and Red Sox.
“The people at the top were so great to me.”
Barnes pitched in the Marlins’ 4-3 win over the Astros on Monday, and then had the option to go home before Miami faced Boston.
The 32-year-old Barnes said he’ll wait until the regular season to see his old team again.
“I’m not going to stick around for the game [against the Sox],” Barnes said. “I’ll be buddy-buddy when we play them in June.”
Barnes said last month that he got the call from Bloom about his DFA while he was sitting at home about to play a video game.
“I almost didn’t pick it up because I was playing video games,” Barnes recalled on the “Jared Carrabis Podcast.” “That thought didn’t even cross my mind. I thought it was a standard check-in, like, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’
“… It was essentially, roster construction, with having to have some flexible pieces. On paper and analytically, the last two months of the season were — he didn’t say lucky — but kind of insinuated that.”
Barnes was the longest-tenured Red Sox player when the team announced that he had been designated for assignment on Jan. 24 to make room for outfielder Adam Duvall.
Boston traded him to the Marlins for veteran left-handed reliever Richard Bleier a week later.
“It was a complete blindside,” he said at the time.
Barnes also reposted a tweet from the @RedSoxStats Twitter account that said he was “run into the ground” in Boston.
“I go from being an All-Star closer to not making a postseason roster to being terrible for two months then on the IL for another two,” Barnes said after the trade. “You went from the highest to the lows in the blink of an eye, it felt like. That’s not easy to deal with, honestly, especially since I felt like it was my responsibility to be the guy at the back end when all else failed.”
Barnes struggled in Boston’s bullpen after he signed a two-year, $18.75 million contract extension prior to playing in his first All-Star Game in 2021.
He also missed time with a shoulder injury in June.
The Red Sox selected Barnes in the first round (19th overall) of the 2011 MLB Draft.
The UConn product debuted with the major league club in 2014 and helped Boston win a World Series title in 2018.
In nine years with the Red Sox, Barnes recorded a 4.07 ERA and 1.34 WHIP with 556 strikeouts and 200 walks in 431.2 innings.