My Thoughts On the Red Sox Firing of Dave Dombrowski
The Yankees played well against the Red Sox at Fenway and won their 13 games against the Sox this season. But there was been more even more drama behind the scenes at Fenway during the recent series. The Red Sox decided to part ways with their President of Baseball Operations, Dave Dombrowski.
The Red Sox season has been a disaster to put it lightly. The defending World Series champs have won just 76 games and are only nine games above .500. What is the difference between this year’s Sox team and last year’s? The bullpen seems to be the first and main issue for the Sox, they lead the MLB in blown saves with 27. Just think, if they had won half of those games, they would be in the driver’s seat for a wild card spot. The reality, tough, is they didn’t. And they are paying the price for some bad decisions. First, the Sox decided to let Craig Kimbrel, their closer, walk. Next, they did nothing to improve their weak bullpen during the trade deadline. This has been Dombrowski’s main critique this year but it is not the main reason he was fired.
Dave Dombrowski was fired because of the lack of trust the Red Sox have in him to negotiate big contracts this off-season. The biggest contract coming up being the one for reigning AL MVP, Mookie Betts. Betts is up for a long term deal and after the massive extensions players such as Mike Trout and Bryce Harper received you can bet that Betts will want to be be in the same ballpark. I imagine the contract he will be looking for will be north of 400 million dollars over 8 or 9 years. Red Sox ownership clearly didn’t trust Dombrowski to negotiate his very important contract. The Sox clearly want Betts back, but at what cost?
Dombrowski has had a history of overpaying players such as World Series MVP, Steven Pearce and World Series hero, and ex-Yankee, Nate Eovaldi. These signings helped to push the Red Sox in having the highest payroll in baseball. That, clearly, is not ownership’s desire – especially when the team is an also-ran.
Going forward, the Red Sox ownership needs to figure out what direction they want to take their organization in because right now they appear to be on a very slippery slope which could take years to fix if they don’t make a splash this off-season.
