The Red Sox have parted ways with Dave Dombrowski because they weren’t on the same page, the next GM will hopefully be reading the same book.
It really was a disappointing season for the Boston Red Sox. They never really got it together this year from spring training through the regular season, the team just never clicked. 2019 was a total opposite from the 108 regular-season wins for the Sox who finished with only 84 wins this season.
It looked like things were going up after they had won the World Series last year but unfortunately, the whole team couldn’t put what happened in 2018 behind them. For Dave Dombrowski, he really didn’t do anything at the deadline to improve the team and bragged about how good the bullpen was when it really wasn’t. It started after the Sox won the World Series that Dombrowski and ownership weren’t on the same page.
Dombrowski was the right guy when he got here but going forward the Red Sox need a guy who has experience building a good farm system and developing players. Boston has a depleted farm system and they need someone with experience to get it back on track.
Questions remain though after the ownership’s press conference Friday. If they didn’t agree with Dombrowski after winning the World Series why did they sign Chris Sale, Nathan Eovaldi, and Steve Pearce? Those are on ownership, not Dombrowski they could’ve told him no and not given him the money to sign the players.
John Henry hoped that things would change between Dombrowski and him so they’d be on the same page but they didn’t. That is the reason FSG didn’t give him an extension. The Henry quote below explains that, from WEEI.
"“What changed quickly was right after the World Series, we had preliminary talks about our way forward and it was clear to me we weren’t on the same page at that point, In fact, he and I talked about it that night, that Sunday evening, I think he disagreed with me about that, that we disagreed. We were even disagreeing, you might say, that we disagreed. There was a difference, I think, in how we thought we should move forward.”"
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Dombrowski did a good job in Boston, having won several division titles and a World Series. However, for the future of the team going forward, they need someone that will be on the same page as them. Alex Cora will still be the manager though regardless of who comes in to run the baseball operations.
The Sox went without a closer in 2019 after Craig Kimbel signed with the Cubs after playing chicken in the offseason. He relied on the bullpen with Brandon Workman, Ryan Braiser, and Matt Barnes none of which really worked consistently. He signed Eovaldi to a four- year/$68M extension which was a bad contract with his injury history. He also signed Sale to a five-year/$145M extension but didn’t finish the season out.
He also had no backup plan for Dustin Pedroia and didn’t sign a second baseman. Those examples and others are why the ownership group and Dombrowski parted ways. The Red Sox used a platoon to fill the void left by Pedroia with none of the options seemingly being a long-term answer.
Whoever the next General Manager is they’ll have a hard task ahead of them as this will be a very interesting offseason for sure. It’s not known if the Red Sox will keep J.D. Martinez or even Mookie Betts, but they’ll try. It’s known fact now that ownership didn’t trust Dombrowski to make the decisions which would be best for the team going forward. In the end, FSG made the right decision to let Dombrowski go and hopefully the next GM can build a championship team with what’s left.