Although Dave Dombrowski is out as President of Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox, let’s not forget the great things he was able to do here.
Dave Dombrowski’s time as President of Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox has come to an end. The former boss of the team was fired on Sunday night.
The thing that shocked me most was the timing of this decision, as we’re in the middle of September. We’re not in the middle of a postseason chase, however, which is something that most likely would have prevented Dombrowski from getting fired, or at least prevent it from happening before the season ended.
According to The Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy, Dombrowski was apparently distancing himself from the rest of the front office.
"“He holed up with his buddies Frank Wren and Tony La Russa. He insisted that Sam Kennedy have zero input on all baseball decisions and never clicked with the “new” CEO. Dombrowski was not particularly close to the people in baseball ops. Or Tom Werner.”"
This, to me, is very interesting, as it tells you how this was really in the works for a while when you think about it. Shaughnessy went on to make a good point that when the Red Sox are as underwhelming as they have been this season with the highest payroll in all of baseball, somebody is going to get the blame. The ownership decided for that someone to be Dombrowski.
With all that being said, it’s still weird to see Dealin’ Dave go about 10 months after a World Series title. John Henry does have a reputation as a tough boss, as he got rid of Theo Epstein only a few years removed from winning two World Series titles, and relieved Ben Cherington of his duties only two years after winning the 2013 championship.
Running the Red Sox is not an easy task, and Dave Dombrowski, unfortunately, had to learn this the hard way. However, him getting canned doesn’t mean in any way that he was a bad President of Baseball ops for this team. Let’s go back to the beginning.
When Dombrowski first got here, the Red Sox were in the midst of a last-place season. The pitching was awful, so this team needed a starter and a closer. During the offseason of 2015, the first thing Dombrowski did was trade three prospects to the San Diego Padres for Craig Kimbrel. He then went on to sign the most talented starter on the market, David Price. After winning the division but getting swept in the first round of 2016’s playoffs, Dombrowski did something that came as a shock to many as he traded for Chris Sale and made the pitching staff even more formidable.
Sale was as dominant as ever in 2017, leading the Sox to their second consecutive division title, only to lose in four games to the eventual World Series winning Houston Astros in the division series. With power being something that was lacking out of that 2017 squad, Dombrowski went out and signed power hitter J.D. Martinez in late February, which, in my opinion, ended up being one of the greatest moves in Red Sox history, as J.D. couldn’t be any better in a Red Sox uniform.
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People weren’t expecting much out of the 2018 Red Sox. Nobody was really expecting them to be bad, but after the disappointing 2017 season, I’d say it wasn’t looking great. But boy was it ever.
2018 was great, the most successful Red Sox season of all time, to be exact. They went on to win 108 regular-season games, the most in franchise history. Going 11-3 in the postseason, they’d finish the year with 119 wins and a World Series title. That historic season doesn’t happen without Kimbrel. It doesn’t happen without Price, Sale, Martinez or the deadline acquisitions Nathan Eovaldi and Steve Pearce.
None of those guys are on this team if not for Dombrowski. And none of those guys do what they did for this team without Dombrowski. Thank him, because he is a huge reason as to why the Red Sox are 2018 Champions.
When you look back at Dombrowski’s tenure in Boston, it was a pretty darn good one. With that being said, however, he wasn’t perfect. What he did to gut the farm system may end up as something that haunts this team later down the line. He also vastly overpaid the starting rotation, which is something that may prevent Boston from re-signing Mookie Betts. But at the end of the day, Dombrowski did exactly what was expected of him when he got here. He traded away lots of our prospects for good major league players to win a World Series title, something he wasn’t able to accomplish in Detroit.
It will be interesting as to what the future holds for this team, and who ownership will be hiring as the next President of Baseball Ops. But for right now, be incredibly thankful that Dave Dombrowski won us a championship because I sure know that I am.