The Red Sox are hoping that two blasts from the past can build a brighter future.

In an endeavor to right the ship after three last-place finishes in four years, they fired chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom and pitching coach Dave Bush, and replaced them with Craig Breslow and Andrew Bailey.

As pitchers, Breslow and Bailey shared the Boston bullpen (and the Oakland A’s bullpen before that) for a couple of seasons, including the 2013 championship run. Since retiring, they’ve found success on different tracks: Breslow as an executive credited with turning the Chicago Cubs into an impressive pitching development machine, Bailey as a coach who made San Francisco’s pitching staff one of the best in baseball over the last four years.

Both hires have been met with overwhelming approval, including from a notable former teammate.

“I think it’s a good idea,” David Ortiz told the Herald on Friday. “Hiring guys that are familiar with what we got going on in Boston, guys that live and breath that organization, guys that have been in the clubhouse.”

“Having a good pitching staff, it takes a minute to put it together, but (Bailey) knows what it takes in each division to be able to perform at the highest level and to compete,” he said. “Because this division is loaded.”

“It’s a competition, like pretty much everybody in the division played over .500. We did until the end,” he said of the 2023 Red Sox, who battled back from losing records several times throughout the season, before finally sinking under for good on September 16.

Less than a year after his retirement at the end of the ’16 season, Ortiz signed a lifetime contract to remain with the Red Sox in various advisory and mentoring capacities. He and Pedro Martinez, who famously urged the club to sign Ortiz after the Minnesota Twins released him, are huge proponents of maintaining the link between the past, present and future. In particular, making sure that the championship culture they instilled in 2004 is passed down from those who know how to win, to those who are trying to win.

“Bressler is very smart,” Ortiz lauded. “He knows how we run. He knows how we roll in the clubhouse. He’s very familiar with that goal. That’s gonna be something that he’s got under his belt, that he can use to perform moving forward, to help the ball club.”

“During our time, when we played, we came to be winners. He knows what it takes to win, and he can use that,” he continued. “So, I got some really good hopes and good feelings about what he’s gonna do moving forward.”

Ortiz is one of the greatest stars in the history of one of the American League’s original and winningest franchises, but recently, he’s been impressed by a newer, only very recently successful club’s strategy.

“You know, Texas, they won but they’ve been trying to put it together for the past couple of years, and that’s a great story,” he said of the first-time World Series champion Rangers, “Because everybody thought the GM C.Y.” – He referred to Chris Young by his initials – “was crazy, signing guys like (Corey) Seager and the rest of the squad, and all of a sudden, look what happened!

“You need to know where you want to go a year from now, two years from now, and I’m pretty sure Breslow knows that.”