Red Sox announce Dave Dombrowski is their new president of baseball operations.

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irinmike said:
The hand wringing here about the plight of the Sox has been overwhelming recently.  The cries for the firing of Farrell and Cherington have been just as loud.  Now that the ownership has made a change, its the wrong one, according to many who post here regularly.  How about letting this settle in for a while to see where it goes?  One thing is clear, the Sox  were on a path to perennial mediocrity, if no changes were made.  A change of leadership at the top, was obviously needed.  I for one will let these changes, and the many others with player personnel this off season play out, before criticizing them. 
 
Building on this, I think those who criticize this hiring should at least offer some better choices rather than just pouting. It's like criticizing the Iran deal without offering any alternative. Perhaps many would have liked to see Lucchino stay on? Perhaps there's another President of Baseball Ops out there that floats people's boats? Maybe someone already in the Sox organization?
 
On that note: a lot of people have put forth a couple of names for GM (DiPoto, Wren) so before we start an "I hate ..." as the new GM and the Red Sox suck, maybe we should list he candidates in another thread and start preemptively lobbying. Otherwise there's just too much negative shit in a losing season.
 

tomdeplonty

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Laser Show said:
This is revisionist history. "Lackluster" seasons are winning 95 games and the wild card, 89 games despite injuries to Pedroia and Buchholz, and 90 games (missing the playoffs by 1 game)?
 
You don't like the word "lackluster": that's fair. The fact is, the team failed to "play meaningful games into October" (to paraphrase one of the statements from last night) in 2009, 2010, and 2011.
 
The switch to the Lucchino/Cherington regime wasn't just a reaction to 2011; it was a reaction to the previous three years of the team failing to make a run in the playoffs - which we have repeatedly heard Theo and others articulate is the organization's goal - and as others have already pointed out here, that change did not seem to come with any major change in philosophy.
 
Henry gave the Lucchino/Cherington regime four years, which have yielded a championship and three really dismal seasons. So now, another regime change, and maybe a new philosophical direction as well.
 
My larger point is that this is hardly "reactionary" or "overreacting" on Henry's part.
 
EDIT: grammar
 

nighthob

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HomeRunBaker said:
I doubt DD would ever do a 180 and be patient with someone elses prospects.....actually I'm certain he wouldn't. He wasn't hired to not make changes. Be prepared for fireworks as they seem to be inevitable with these young kids.
 
Meh. At some point there needed to be a culling anyway. There's decent list of guys that are potential major leaguers that just have no place here (Marrero, Cecchini, Shaw, possibly Bradley), that need to be bundled off in deals for major league talent. They also have a glut of guys with mid-rotation starter potential to move in trade.
 
I sincerely doubt that Moncada, Espinoza, or Devers will be going anywhere since two of them project as middle of the order bats and the other as a front of the rotation starter, and those are the guys GMs/Presidents are supposed to acquire, not give away for marginal upgrades. But guys like Manuel Margot, on the other hand, are prime candidates to be moved. He's clearly an extremely talented player, and a potential all star, but in Boston they have a better guy ahead of him (Betts) and guys like Andy Benintendi and the good Basabe twin behind him (before getting into the new international players). So that's where I see movement potential.
 

WenZink

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MyDaughterLovesTomGordon said:
 
Can we take it easy with the fat-shaming? "super-fatty" "porky" - just stop. It doesn't appear to be inhibiting his ability to hit the baseball this year. 
 
The point is that Fielder, Cabrera and Sandoval are really, really fat.  And that any GM that gives a long-term contract to really, really fat players probably doesn't plan to be around at the end of their contracts when they are in their late 30s and really, really, really fat.  At least Cherington's contract to Sandoval was to cover his late 20s, early 30s.
 

Laser Show

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tomdeplonty said:
 
You don't like the word "lackluster": that's fair. The fact is, the team failed to "play meaningful games into October" (to paraphrase one of the statements from last night) in 2009, 2010, and 2011.
 
The switch to the Lucchino/Cherington regime wasn't just a reaction to 2011; it was a reaction to the previous three years of the team failing to make a run in the playoffs - which we have repeatedly heard Theo and others articulate is the organization's goal - and as others have already pointed out here, that change did not seem to come with any major change in philosophy.
 
Similarly, Henry gave the Lucchino/Cherington regime four years, which have yielded a championship and three really dismal seasons. So now, another regime change, and maybe a new philosophical direction as well.
 
My larger point is that this is hardly "reactionary" or "overreacting" on Henry's part.
 
EDIT: grammar
First off, I don't think Lucchino/Cherington was a reaction to missing the playoffs. I think it was a reaction to Theo leaving.

Second, following your logic, how come they didn't institute a regime change after 2006, when the failed to "play meaningful games into October" for 2 consecutive years?

Look, I think there's a lot to what Theo used to say - win 90 to 95 games and hope for the best. You can't control much else. In my mind, that plan worked brilliantly until Cherington was promoted to GM. And obviously that's been different.

EDIT: I'm not sure if it's reactionary or not, personally, but it's definitely based off results in the last 4 years and not the last 7.
 

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A few years ago, the Royals had what was considered the best farm system, they kept most of the young cheap guys but they did have the guts to trade Wil Myers for Shields. In hindsight, they knew whom to keep and whom to trade. It take guts to trade prospects but how many times do teams fall in love with their prospects? 
 

Rovin Romine

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I'm a little excited.   Something needed to change.  
 
Dombrowski's going to succeed or fail based on his team's ability to project H-Ram, Porcello, and Sandoval.   They have to be designated as players to keep or players to move.  
 
Basically the list of players making more than 5 million per year is: H-Ram, Sandoval, Porcello, Castillo, Clay (if the option is picked up), Uehara, Ortiz and Pedroia.   We've got 50-55 million per year tied up each year for the next three years in H-Ram, Porcello, and Sandoval. If they're mediocre-starter-ish level players, that effectively makes the Sox a club with a 120million overall budget.  
 
(And, as much as I wasn't rushing to judgment on Farrell, he hasn't seemed to have improved as an in-game manager in 4 years.)
 

AB in DC

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Snodgrass'Muff said:
 
Eh, this opinion is predicated on the assumption that Wren will be the next GM. Also, I'm not sure why the idea of data or scouting still persists, or why people think that the Sox moving in the direction of one or the other means they will be virtually ignoring one instead of simply adjusting the balance between the two. No front office is fully data driven or fully scout driven. They all employ both and a shift could simply be something like 60/40 to 50/50. I'm gonna hang back a comfortable distance away from the ledge until we have a lot more information.
 
Dombrowski has been criticized for not building up the analytics dept in Detroit.  Well, now he's inheriting a strong one in Boston.  The folks in the dept will have plenty of opportunities to prove their worth to the new guy.
 

Tyrone Biggums

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WenZink said:
 
The point is that Fielder, Cabrera and Sandoval are really, really fat.  And that any GM that gives a long-term contract to really, really fat players probably doesn't plan to be around at the end of their contracts when they are in their late 30s and really, really, really fat.  At least Cherington's contract to Sandoval was to cover his late 20s, early 30s.
Body type should be a factor sure. But because Panda isn't built like Gabe Kapler does not play a part in my evaluation of the player.

When you give these contracts out such as the Miggy deal you're expecting the deal to make sense for the first half of the contract while hoping it doesn't kill you on the back 9. Jury is still out on both the Miggy and Fielder deals even though it was the Tigers owner that was the driving force there.

Body type isn't the end all the be all. If Panda was hitting his career norms this year people would still point out the weight being a huge issue. Not trying to down play it but he's signed for relatively short term and into his early 30s. Still lots of time there.
 

fineyoungarm

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DD is with the Tigers in Boston for at least part of the July 24 - 26 homestand. LL retires on August 2. DD is fired on August 4. Dipoto (resigning on July 1 from the Angels) is hired by Cherington (???) on August 15.  DD is hired to replace LL on the baseball operations side on August 19. Cherington announces that he will not stay on as GM on August 19.
 
That sure is a lot of activity crammed into a short period of time. Coincidences do occur. Often. But that is the chronology.
 
Of all that has occurred in less than a month, only Farrell's cancer diagnosis was not somebody's decision. It gives me "fly on the wall" envy.
 

Savin Hillbilly

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BeantownIdaho said:
Well yeah of course I would bring Harper to town- I can make up any scenario that won't ever happen to make a point. I can see some redundancy in the outfield, but as I posted above, I believe we may be seeing the reality of what we always thought was potential as of today. If the farm is so deep, then prioritizing our kids of the future isn't a problem when we have so many as trade chips. Yep one of , Margo, Devers and Moncada can be dealt which means two of them are priority on keeping. 
 
I think you're still not getting the point I'm actually making, though. There's a spectrum of deals possible for any player, from the insanely stupid to the wildly unrealistic (like the Betts-for-Harper example). Somewhere on that spectrum are one or more hypothetical deals that would return fair value. What those deals might be for Betts, I don't know and don't want to speculate, but they almost certainly exist, they might make sense for the club under certain circumstances, and Dombrowski, if he's smart, will be open to them. Saying certain players are "off limits" is just reducing the number of ways you could possibly make your team better by some indeterminate factor. There's no need for it.
 

Toe Nash

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That overthemonster article really conveniently blames Ilitch for all the bad contracts DD gave out, but then blames BC for the bad contracts currently on the Sox. There is some amount of ownership meddling in both cases, but you need to be consistent.
 
If DD makes bad deals in the future, I'm sure there will be a new FO bogeyman that made him do it, if that is the spin you want to put on it.
 
Maybe Lucchino made them sign Hanley but it's probably more likely that the mandate in Boston from the ownership and the fans is to compete every year. That would then make them not only sign Hanley but also make deals like Lackey for Craig and Kelly instead of prospects, or $9.5m on Masterson instead of making a competition among young players for the final rotation spot.
 

nattysez

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(1)  JWH declared weeks ago that Cherington would be around for years to come, then essentially fired him
(2)  In 2012, JWH declared that Bill James was not influencing things enough, now they're hiring a pretty analytics-light guy to run the operation
(3)  In 2013, the team was lauded for being sensible with the veteran contracts it signed and said they'd learned from the Carl Crawford, AGon and Beckett contracts.  Two years later, they signed Hanley, Panda and Porcello.
 
You can try to write all of this off as "being flexible," but it feels to me that this is a highly reactionary ownership group that doesn't have a plan (at least at the major-league level).  
 
Hopefully Dombrowski comes in and establishes a path forward from which they won't deviate when there's a bump in the road.  I'm disappointed that JWH hired his buddy rather than at least seeing what others (Kim Ng?) could bring to the table, but hopefully Dombrowski still has some magic left and makes the right calls about which prospects to trade and which to keep.
 

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Someone brought this up earlier but I think it needs to be repeated. Isn't DD more a replacement for Lucchino than for Ben? They are making it clear that they wanted Ben to stay.
 

Rasputin

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I think a lot of people are assuming that Dombrowski is going to behave the same way here as he did in other places and I think that's silly.
 
Any competent executive--and Dombrowski is one--is going to act somewhat differently under different circumstances.
 
His job here is going to take a team that is on the cusp of a very long window of sustained success and his job is to make that start as soon as possible and last as long as possible. He's in a great position to do that. He can do it without gutting the farm. He may well have to trade someone we don't want traded, but that's not the same thing.
 

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nattysez said:
(1)  JWH declared weeks ago that Cherington would be around for years to come, then essentially fired him
(2)  In 2012, JWH declared that Bill James was not influencing things enough, now they're hiring a pretty analytics-light guy to run the operation
(3)  In 2013, the team was lauded for being sensible with the veteran contracts it signed and said they'd learned from the Carl Crawford, AGon and Beckett contracts.  Two years later, they signed Hanley, Panda and Porcello.
 
You can try to write all of this off as "being flexible," but it feels to me that this is a highly reactionary ownership group that doesn't have a plan (at least at the major-league level).  
 
 
 
 
Or, the guy Henry wanted all along to run baseball ops finally became available.
 

Harry Hooper

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He said defense up the middle, and typically offensive power from your corners.

 
 
 

DourDoerr

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I wonder how much frustration there was behind the scenes at Ben's hoarding of prospects?  Could the change arise from a wish to be more proactive on trading prospects when they're at peak value (and identifying which prospects are the correct ones to trade)?  DD seems an almost perfect answer if there was conflict.
 
Also, a few have mentioned DD's age as a minus.  I think it's a plus in that candidates who wish to have the powers of the Red Sox GM/President have hope that the way will be clear in the not too distant future.
 

Yelling At Clouds

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Savin Hillbilly said:
I think that can be read as saying that a Gray deal would require trading prospects of that caliber, but not necessarily that it would require all four of them.
 
 Or as Oakland's way of saying "Gray isn't going anywhere"
 

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DourDoerr said:
I wonder how much frustration there was behind the scenes at Ben's hoarding of prospects?
Well, I assume that anyone behind the scenes would actually have information on deals that were rejected that would lead to said frustration. Unless you have access to that info it sounds like you're making quite the leap to map your own feelings into a broader narrative that is entirely unwarranted.
 

nvalvo

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nighthob said:
 
Meh. At some point there needed to be a culling anyway. There's decent list of guys that are potential major leaguers that just have no place here (Marrero, Cecchini, Shaw, possibly Bradley), that need to be bundled off in deals for major league talent. They also have a glut of guys with mid-rotation starter potential to move in trade.
 
I sincerely doubt that Moncada, Espinoza, or Devers will be going anywhere since two of them project as middle of the order bats and the other as a front of the rotation starter, and those are the guys GMs/Presidents are supposed to acquire, not give away for marginal upgrades. But guys like Manuel Margot, on the other hand, are prime candidates to be moved. He's clearly an extremely talented player, and a potential all star, but in Boston they have a better guy ahead of him (Betts) and guys like Andy Benintendi and the good Basabe twin behind him (before getting into the new international players). So that's where I see movement potential.
 
I disagree. 
 
Marrero has very little trade value. However, his optionable years are hugely important for the team's middle infield depth. You need a Marrero type around on the bench/AAA or else you occasionally end up with Nick Green, starting shortstop.
 
Shaw (see Marrero). Neither of these guys are meaningful pieces for the kind of players we need to be bringing in, but they're important to the team's depth while they have options. 
 
Bradley and Cecchini are two flavors of a different situation. Cecchini has underperformed for years now. He has *zero* trade value. The team needs to decide if he has any shot of returning to form, and either keep him or cut him/throw him in as like a tertiary piece in a trade. But there's not much need to do that, because we have so little in AAA that he's not really blocking anyone until Moncada and Devers, et al, get up there. If I were a rival GM, Cecchini isn't the guy I'd pick as a tertiary piece from the Sox system.  
 
Bradley's glove gives him a bit more value, in that he'd be useful as a fifth outfielder even without much offensive improvement. But now that he's showing glimmers with the bat, we need to figure out if this is for real. If he can actually hit, he's pretty much a top-five CF in the game. Seriously: a .750 OPS version of Bradley is better than all but Trout, McCutchen, Pollock, Cain, and Jones — Bradley put up a 1 WAR season with the batting line he sported *in 2014*: hell, he's put up about 1 WAR so far *this year* in only 100 PA. Personally, I think he can hit; that .750 OPS is basically the MLE of his AAA line. If he can't, he's a decent bench player.
 
But you don't want to trade a top-five CF for the return of a decent bench player, but you can't get his legitimate return right now. That tells me you hold on to him, probably slotting him in as a bench OF in 2016. 
 
If we're looking for good SPs, we'll need to trade some of the Margot types, and some of the mid-rotation types (Owens and Johnson) could be secondary pieces in that kind of deal. 
 

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nattysez said:
Hopefully Dombrowski comes in and establishes a path forward from which they won't deviate when there's a bump in the road.  I'm disappointed that JWH hired his buddy rather than at least seeing what others (Kim Ng?) could bring to the table, but hopefully Dombrowski still has some magic left and makes the right calls about which prospects to trade and which to keep.
Dombrowski didn't replace Cherington, he replaced Lucchino.
 
This is Henry saying that he feels confident in the people in place currently, himself, and Werner to run the team in a fashion that generates significant revenue.  Financially he sees no need to rock the boat.  This is an admission of failure by the baseball operations side of the table, likely including himself.  Dombrowski is now the highest ranking baseball man this organization has hired.  I'd say that is a pretty clear sign that Henry wants superior checks and balances on baseball ops staff than what he, Werner, or previously Luccino could provide.
 
I'd bet that Ng gets an interview for the GM position.  She might have a good shot if Dipoto or Wren isn't a foregone conclusion.  I don't think Wren is as locked in as Bob Nightingale suggested in his tweet, though I wouldn't be surprised if he takes Allard Baird's job.
 
People going chicken little over Dombrowski's general aversion to sabermetrics should chill it out a bit.  Dombrowski's role is likely going to be much more of a grand vizier responsible only to Henry/Werner and he will employ a GM and various other staffers to do the real leg work.  I'm sure Henry, a noted saber advocate, is going to keep a meaningful contingent of saber-oriented guys around, not the least of which being Bill James.
 
Lets wait and see how he fills out the front office before jumping off a cliff.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if he goes with someone like Dipoto or Ng to give the top tier management some balanced perspective, look to add a better traditional scouting type in place of Baird (like Wren), and then have a strong metrics staff to provide a worthwhile backbone for all organizational work.
 
My one big hope is that Eddie Romero is rewarded for his exceptional work over the last several years.  He has been outright killing it as director of international scouting.
 

rembrat

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Merkle's Boner said:
Someone brought this up earlier but I think it needs to be repeated. Isn't DD more a replacement for Lucchino than for Ben? They are making it clear that they wanted Ben to stay.
 
Not really. They created a new position for DD where he has the final say on moves. I think that's what put Ben off. That would be a step back for him.
 

Harry Hooper

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strek1 said:
 So if Billy B becomes available does Dombrowski get dumped :p
 
Back then, potentially available Beane was second choice behind not available Dombrowski.
 

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OCD SS said:
Well, I assume that anyone behind the scenes would actually have information on deals that were rejected that would lead to said frustration. Unless you have access to that info it sounds like you're making quite the leap to map your own feelings into a broader narrative that is entirely unwarranted.
For more clarity, I probably should have written "if there was any frustration."  No, I have zero info on prospective deals.  I also have zero feelings regarding the trading/not trading of prospects by Ben.  I observed and then thought he held onto several of our pitching prospects a bit too long and it hurt their presumed value (which is based on the perception - partly fed by some threads here - that at least some of them were well regarded before they started getting hammered in the majors).  As far as unwarranted - well, I'd regard the hiring of DD as a logical result if someone on the Red Sox wanted a more proactive stance on prospect evaluation given DD's prior record.  I just don't think anything I mentioned was really entirely unwarranted on a Red Sox board.  But maybe I'm incorrect.
 

AB in DC

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rembrat said:
 
Not really. They created a new position for DD where he has the final say on moves. I think that's what put Ben off. That would be a step back for him.
 
Lucchino didn't have final say?  
 
In any case, I don't see anything "new" in the position other than splitting off some CEO duties to Kennedy.
 

soxhop411

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“@jcmccaffrey: Cherington found out Saturday they were pursuing Dombrowski.”
“@PeteAbe: #RedSox met with Dombrowski on Thursday in Chicago. Cherington was not informed until Saturday.”
 

Drek717

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nvalvo said:
 
I disagree. 
I agree that Cecchini is worthless at this point, but Shaw and Marrero are the kind of guys who make idea secondary pieces in that they fill holes for clubs and offer upside.  Also, Owens and Johnson are both concensus top 50 prospects as LHPs who have both shown quality stuff at the ML level this season, they are anything but secondary pieces.  They're comparable prospects to Jonathan Gray but with better actual production.
 
To demonstrate a hypothetical, I could see either Owens or Johnson being the central piece in a deal for Carlos Gonzalez, who the Rockies will likely want to move since they aren't going to suddenly spring back into contention in the next two years.  They'll also likely look to move Jose Reyes to another club in GFIN mode, so the addition of Marrero lets them insert a strong defensive SS into their depth chart while they break in their young starters.  ML GMs do place legitimate value in acquisitions like that.
 
I personally think Marrero has more value to the Red Sox as a MI who frees them up to trade the significantly more valuable Holt to a team needing a 2B, but that remains to be seen.  Marrero would absolutely be a worthwhile add-on player in any ML deal, he just isn't going to headline a deal for an impact pitcher or bat.  Maybe Marrero for a proven reliever with limited control years left, but that's about it.
 
Owens and Johnson though?  They're headliners moreso than Margot and probably moreso than Devers or Espinoza at this point since those two are both so far away.  The vast majority of clubs would slot Owens or Johnson straight into the ML rotations to start 2016 and do so gladly.  With their high floors, high upside, left handedness, and six years of control they will be highly valued on the trade market if Dombrowski goes that route.
 

soxhop411

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“@STEVEBURTONWBZ: Ben Cherington said that in order for him to work with Dave Dombrowski he had to be all in, and he wasn’t. He didn’t think he could be. #WBZ”
 

8slim

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Rasputin said:
I think a lot of people are assuming that Dombrowski is going to behave the same way here as he did in other places and I think that's silly.
 
Any competent executive--and Dombrowski is one--is going to act somewhat differently under different circumstances.
 
His job here is going to take a team that is on the cusp of a very long window of sustained success and his job is to make that start as soon as possible and last as long as possible. He's in a great position to do that. He can do it without gutting the farm. He may well have to trade someone we don't want traded, but that's not the same thing.
 
 
Agreed.  I think it's...strange...that some people seem to be suggesting that Dombrowski is going to willfully ignore advanced metrics and purposefully destroy the farm system.  As if he's some second-coming of Omar Minaya.
 

soxhop411

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“@redsoxstats: Cherington says in all the talks this summer with owners he never told or led to believe they were interested in hiring a Dombrowski type.”