It’s hard not to like Dave Dombrowski’s approach
So far, so good for Dave Dombrowski
COMMENTARY
Since the baseball offseason is in part a time for self-scouting and making sure you don’t repeat the mistakes of the previous season, I’ll admit this if I haven’t already: I had mixed feelings when Ben Cherington lost his clout and left his job in August. But the majority of those feelings were sympathetically in his favor. I didn’t like everything he did – the Rick Porcello trade/extension provided a double dose of bewilderment – but for the most part I appreciated his measured, honest approach and his fundamental baseball sensibilities.
I appreciated his emphasis on building, to borrow a previously coined phrase, a player-development machine. I appreciated his deftness in supplementing the roster with unheralded but accomplished veterans before the 2013 season and the delightful October outcome of that. I appreciated that he acquired Stephen Drew twice.
That’s not to suggest I didn’t appreciate Dave Dombrowski’s bona fides when the long-time and respected executive was brought in as the president of baseball operations on August 18. That development felt like a bombshell. Perhaps it should not have. After all, Dombrowski had worked for John Henry with the Marlins way back when, and Cherington’s Red Sox had finished in last place in three of the past four years. Dombrowski was accomplished and, after the Tigers fired him August 4, available. I respected the guy who was arriving, but was bummed to see Cherington go.
I still feel bad that Cherington, a son of New Hampshire who worked extraordinarily hard to briefly realize what is a dream job for most of us around here, lost the gig less than two years after helping deliver a third World Series title in 10 years. (He had a hand in winning the other two as well.)
But here we are now, two months and a few stray days after the end of the 2015 season, and way too many months before the beginning of the next one, and I can say this without feeling a single sympathetic twinge:
The decision is working out just as splendidly as Henry and Dombrowski must have envisioned the day it all went down.
The winter meetings are barely a day old, and Dombrowski has already lived up to his billing as someone who takes care of offseason business swiftly. He knows what he wants, and if he can’t go out and get it, he moves on to the next item on his to-do list.
And so far, impressively, it seems like he’s gotten the first item on his to-do list a couple of different times already.
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The Red Sox, winners of 78 games a season ago, entered the offseason with two primary needs: a premier starter to front the rotation, and hard-throwing help in the bullpen.
(OK, so it’s three needs if you consider exiling Hanley Ramirez – one of Cherington’s most damaging mistakes – to any baseball outpost willing to take him. Hey, a man can only work so many hot-stove blockbusters at once.)
How has Dombrowski addressed those issues? Let us count the impressive transactions:
On November 13, he surprised those of us who were staked out on Aroldis Chapman Watch by acquiring electrifying closer Craig Kimbrel from the Padres for a trio of prospects. (It’s apparently a good thing the Chapman rumors didn’t come to fruition.)
Then, on December 2, word broke that the Red Sox would sign All-Star free-agent lefthander David Price to a seven-year, $217 million deal; that deal was finalized Friday.
And then, Monday, Dombrowski pulled off a deal that sent lefty starter Wade Miley and reliever Jonathan Aro to the Mariners for reliever Carson Smith and lefty starter Roenis Elias.
That move didn’t match the Kimbrel/Price acquisitions in terms of magnitude, but should matter significantly in the improvement of a suddenly imposing bullpen. Dig this: Smith, 26, has used a vicious wipeout slider and a sinking fastball to strike out 102 batters in 78 innings in his two-season career.
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Last season, he averaged 11.8 strikeouts per nine innings (92 Ks in 70 innings), and has similar numbers to touted Phillies closer Ken Giles.
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Throw Smith into the bullpen stew with Kimbrel (13.2 Ks/9 last year, an exceptional rate and yet tied for a career low) and Uehara (10.5 K/9 last year) and the Red Sox should miss a lot of bats in the late innings. Gone are the days of Jean Machi and Alexi Ogando pitching high-leverage innings. And Junichi Tazawa will no longer have to warm up three times per game, provided John Farrell can kick the habit.
As for Miley, he joins an exclusive club in Red Sox lore: the mediocre veteran lefty who spends just a single, uneventful season here before moving on. Other club members include … actually, the only other one I can think of off the top of my head is Frank Tanana in 1981. Miley was all right – he got a lot of credit, probably too much, for showing up every fifth day and usually being competent, just like Tim Wakefield used to. Last year was one of those sad years in which competence was at a premium.
Competence is giving way to the exceptional. With David Price here, the need for an innings eater who at his best buys the bullpen a day of rest isn’t that important. Especially since the bullpen is damn good now. I’m not sure he’s a whole hell of a lot better than Elias, but new Mariners general manager Jerry DiPoto must have seen something he liked during his partial season embedded with the Red Sox.
Watching DiPoto make this deal for the Mariners – and trade away an emerging, productive and popular player in Smith — reminded me of something else I’ve like about the Early Deals of Dombrowski. It may be what I’ve liked the most, actually. He’s enhanced the roster without trading away the players developed and valued by the previous regime.
Yeah, he gave up a lot for Kimbrel – outfielder Manuel Margot, shortstop Javy Guerra, lefty Logan Allen, and utility player Carlos Asuaje. My initial reaction upon hearing about the deal that November night was that it was too much, and oh God he’s going to gut the farm system until we’re back to the barren days of trying to convince ourselves that Morgan Burkhardt and Izzy Alcantara are prospects, isn’t he? That was a legitimate and justifiable cause for anxiety. Dombrowski has a history – a mostly positive and sporadically exceptional one – of trading prospects for established stars. That’s certainly an acceptable strategy, and Kimbrel is a star closer.
But what if he had no attachment to anyone he was inheriting? What if he undervalued or ill-informed about the best prospects? Would he use Yoan Moncada, Rafael Devers, Anderson Espinosa and Andrew Benintendi as trade chips? Would he send away all of Cherington’s babies? And when would it end? What if he made Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts, the Red Sox’ two best players in ’15 who are, ridiculously, just entering their age 23 seasons, available for the right price? And what if his right price was the wrong price?
Relax. The Price deal was confirmation. We can relax. As it turns out, Dombrowski knows what he has as well as what he wants. He traded talented but blocked prospects for Kimbrel, measured the starting pitching market, then wisely chose to pursue and sign Price rather than give up the farm system for an established starting pitcher. He improved the roster immensely while retaining the Red Sox’ best young players – and they still have an organizational depth chart loaded with them, some already at Fenway and some on the way.
Maybe he’ll prove me premature and decide on a wheelin’-and-dealin’ whim to trade Betts, Blake Swihart, and the entire Top 10 on SoxProspects.com for the Marlins’ Jose Fernandez. But that seems unlikely, and not just because the reality-challenged Marlins would probably ask for Bogaerts too. Dombrowski has more than a clue. He has a plan, and so far, it seems a masterful one.
With the big deals done – or at least the ones that fix the most glaring flaws in an extremely encouraging way – Dombrowski can make small tweaks to the roster (he’s also signed lefty-mashing fourth outfielder Chris Young), taking advantage of opportunities like the one presented by the Mariners without any particular urgency.
It’s a good spot to be in so early in the offseason, and the swiftness with which Dombrowski maneuvered them into it is enough to make you glad that he’s now in his spot. I liked the previous guy, Ben Cherington, liked him a lot. But just a few months into his tenure, how anyone who follows the Red Sox not be glad that Dombrowski is the guy now?
The most lucrative contracts in Red Sox history
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Chad Finn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeChadFinn
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