Dave Dombrowski: The Right Man For The Job?

[Plympton91]

The only issue with Dombrowski is very similar to that of Belichick in the draft - he wants Tavon Wilson, he blows a second rounder on the player because, well, he's BB and it doesn't matter that Wilson was a 6th rounder at best to everyone else.

Anderson Espinoza's market value should have been worth more than Pomeranz - but because DD "gets his man", it's almost like price be damned. You make the Sale deal 10 times out of 10 - he's an elite performer. But I don't think a guy who deals a top prospect for a mediocre lefty off a good half season represents anything positive.

1. It is debatable how much of a "top prospect" Anderson Espinoza is. He had a really bad second half of the year. I doubt he is even still a top 25, let alone moving up into the top 10.

2. Even top 10 prospects fail to have impactful major league careers quite often.

3. I bet if you look at top 10 prospects in the South Atlantic League, the hit rate is even lower.

4. Espinoza was traded straight up for Pomeranz; how many times in history has a pitcher in low-A been traded straight up for a current All-Star starting pitcher? Consider your history -- Schilling in AA and Anderson in AAA with major league experience for Boddicker. Now tell me again how much more they should have gotten for Espinoza?

5. Look at the list I made above of all the possible outcomes that could lie ahead of Espinoza. What probability do you put on "Becomes a consistently healthy middle of the rotation or better starter before Bradley and Bogaerts sign as free agents with the Yankees?"

 

[Devizier]

Anderson Espinoza's market value should have been worth more than Pomeranz - but because DD "gets his man", it's almost like price be damned. You make the Sale deal 10 times out of 10 - he's an elite performer. But I don't think a guy who deals a top prospect for a mediocre lefty off a good half season represents anything positive.

I'm not so certain of that. This article (written in the aftermath of the Sale trade) provides some perspective.

Heck, some of us have been around long enough to remember the lamentations of losing top-rated Andy Marte for Coco Crisp (after getting him for Edgar Renteria!)

 

[reggiecleveland]

Yeah Pedro is good, but he is small and a likley injury is on its way, and Tony Armas jr had a K( over 11 at Greensboro! And Pavano too! Oh My God!!!!!!

 

[Tyrone Biggums]

I'm not so certain of that. This article (written in the aftermath of the Sale trade) provides some perspective.

Heck, some of us have been around long enough to remember the lamentations of losing top-rated Andy Marte for Coco Crisp (after getting him for Edgar Renteria!)

I member Andy Marte!

I also Member wondering why a top notch Altanta front office would give away the top prospect in Baseball. Him and Moncada are kind of similar in terms of scouting reports however Moncada is much faster. However, it's 2016 and I would hope scouting has improved since the days of Brandon Wood and Andy Marte.

Prospects either are used to replace older talent on the roster or for trades. DD has a great track record in trading the right players. Except of course for Randy Johnson when he was starting out. Truth is until Moncada can hit breaking balls he will never be a productive major league hitter. Benetendi might not have his ceiling but his floor is much higher and his ceiling isn't that low either. Much safer prospect.

 

[nvalvo]

The only issue with Dombrowski is very similar to that of Belichick in the draft - he wants Tavon Wilson, he blows a second rounder on the player because, well, he's BB and it doesn't matter that Wilson was a 6th rounder at best to everyone else.

Anderson Espinoza's market value should have been worth more than Pomeranz - but because DD "gets his man", it's almost like price be damned. You make the Sale deal 10 times out of 10 - he's an elite performer. But I don't think a guy who deals a top prospect for a mediocre lefty off a good half season represents anything positive.

I see what you're saying, and there may be something to it. But at a certain point, market value isn't what we think it should be, it is what it is. Unless I missed something, here are the big league SP moved at the deadline:

TB sends Moore to SF for Duffy, Fox and Santos.
SD sends Pomeranz to Boston for Espinoza.
OAK sends Hill to LA for Montas, Cotton, and Holmes.
ATL sends Norris to LA for three prospects and a PTBNL.
PIT sends Liriano to TOR for Hutchison and others.
MIN sends Ricky Nolasco to LAA for Hector Santiago (or vice versa).
SD sends Cashner to Miami in a complicated deal that was partly renegotiated after the SD scandal.
SD sends Shields to Chicago for Erik Johnson and Fernando Tatis, Jr.
SEA sends Miley to Baltimore for 27 y/o Cuban pitcher Ariel Miranda.

The only pitchers comparable to Pomeranz were Moore and Hill. Liriano turned out to be pretty good for Toronto, but nothing about his first half suggested that was likely.

Moore cost SF their starting 3B Duffy — only a year removed from a 5 fWAR season! — 18 year old Bahamanian SS Lucius Fox, and a 21 year old Dominican SP in A ball Michael Santos. Hill (and Reddick) went to LA for three interesting SP prospects. All three of those guys should be big league starters, Cotton as soon as last September. Some think Montas might relieve, but Holmes and Montas both throw high 90s as starters, and Holmes has a ceiling that approaches Espinoza's.

I don't look at that market and feel like Dombrowski got ripped off. Hill was much more of a dice roll than the others, in that he was dealt while on the DL, and only made six regular season starts for LA. Moore was probably more expensive than Pomeranz, depending on how you value Duffy, and probably unavailable to us anyway. All three of those deals feel expensive to me. I probably like SF's trade the best, because I'm a Duffy skeptic. But it would be something like dealing JBJ if he gets off to a slow start next year.

Some of the deals for lesser pitchers are inexcusably awful. In particular, I really hate Baltimore's trade: Miranda took over Miley's rotation spot in Seattle and pitched better than Miley had, while Miley all but imploded in Baltimore.

 

[Papelbon's Poutine]

Which is all to say nothing of the fact that the Sox acquired more control over Pomeranz than the Dodgers or Giants got in their deals. It's fun and great to critique deals - we all do it, I'm not casting stones - but we know literally nothing about what prices are being asked. We also know nothing about how other teams scouts value our guys - its great that the prospect guys rank Espinoza (or whomever) #X, but maybe the front offices of other teams don't agree and prospect value is not static.

The SP market was pretty slim pickings and prices were high (as you illustrated). Espinoza didn't have a good year, is a long way from meeting his ceiling and a slight premium needs to be accounted for considering the two more years control, the age of Pomeranz, they got extra starts before the deadline because they didn't wait until the last minute and they stayed out of bidding wars.

I'm much happier they gave Espinoza as opposed to a Kopech (who wasn't nearly as highly regarded at the time) for a Hill type move.

 

[JimD]

The only issue with Dombrowski is very similar to that of Belichick in the draft - he wants Tavon Wilson, he blows a second rounder on the player because, well, he's BB and it doesn't matter that Wilson was a 6th rounder at best to everyone else.

Anderson Espinoza's market value should have been worth more than Pomeranz - but because DD "gets his man", it's almost like price be damned. You make the Sale deal 10 times out of 10 - he's an elite performer. But I don't think a guy who deals a top prospect for a mediocre lefty off a good half season represents anything positive.

Dombrowski's career track record of identifying the prospects to keep and the ones to deal is pretty solid, though - I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt in his evaluation of both Pomeranz and Espinoza.

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

Dombrowski's career track record of identifying the prospects to keep and the ones to deal is pretty solid, though - I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt in his evaluation of both Pomeranz and Espinoza.

Yeah, I get cringing at the Pomeranz deal in hindsight since the acquisition of Sale really minimizes the importance of Pomeranz to the team through the last two years of their control over him, but it's a deal that made sense at the time even if you disagreed with the assessment of each player. Knowing what I know now, I'd go back and undo it if for no other reason than to have Espinoza in the system as a chip going forward, but I'm not losing sleep over it.

 

[Cesar Crespo]

I think people haven't adjusted to the new value of prospects. It is odd because the value of prospects deflating is happening at the same time the value of draft picks are inflating. Look at all the prospect for player deals done over the last year or two and pretty much all the trades he made look in line with the current market outside of maybe Thornburg who looks like a coop. I guess it makes sense with the recent struggles of top prospects adjusting to the majors, especially ones with high strike out tendencies. The players with low k rates seem to adjust quite well. If you go far enough back, there is Dustin Pedroia to disprove that theory but his struggles seemed more like bad luck than hapless flailing.

edit: We'll see just how much value picks have when EE signs. Before, it didn't stop teams from signing big name FAs. Maybe since this is the last year, it makes teams more gun shy and really screws over this years Arb class.

 

[jimbobim]

Gammo produces perhaps his 3rd article mostly bemoaning the Sale trade and implicitly pointing a finger at Henry for meddling and selling the future. It is fascinating though how he goes back and forth on it in these articles.

But mark it down. December 14, 2016. The date Gammo compared the Sale deal to both the Eck deal (huge win ) and the Randy Johnson ( massive failure) deal. Perhaps I'm being too hard but I can't help but feel Gammo resents Henry.
Also newsflash to Gammo isn't winning a WS or two the whole point? That isn't just the "base" he dismissively mentions. That's every team in baseball not slavishly following the "tank, don't even pretend to try and be horrible" model of Luhnhow and Theo. His take on the Sale deal continues to annoy me .

Also in uncritical love for the Theo/BC regime he omits the failure to develop .... pitching.

http://www.gammonsdaily.com/peter-gammons-for-those-with-traders-remorse/

At the time of the deal, Johnson was already 25 years old. He was 0-4, 6.67.

Twenty-six years later, Johnson was inducted into the Hall of Fame with Pedro Martinez, a 303 game winner, arguably one of the five greatest lefthanded pitchers of all time. Dombrowski was there in Cooperstown, aware that he might be in his last week with the Tigers, to honor the 25 year old kid he traded for the pitcher his owner needed to determine whether he would sell or keep the Expos.

It was about pitching, and, with pitching, it happens.

It is easier for Dave Dombrowski to come to Boston, inherit arguably the best system in the game and trade a half-dozen of their best prospects for Craig Kimbrel, Drew Pomeranz, Tyler Thornburg and Chris Sale. The Red Sox current core is young, with Andrew Benintendi rising, and with more than a dozen members of the Epstein/Ben Cherington front office departed, he doesn’t have the emotional ties he might have felt had he been part of the development system. Dombrowski came to Boston with the mandate to win one or two World Series to add on to their three in the 2004-13 decade, which is, after all, what the base wants.

The Dodgers did not pull an all-nighter contemplating not getting the Marlins’ pick in the June draft in the Kenley Jansen signing;

 

[Harry Hooper]

Gammo produces perhaps his 3rd article mostly bemoaning the Sale trade and implicitly pointing a finger at Henry for meddling and selling the future. It is fascinating though how he goes back and forth on it in these articles.

But mark it down. December 14, 2016. The date Gammo compared the Sale deal to both the Eck deal (huge win ) and the Randy Johnson ( massive failure) deal. Perhaps I'm being too hard but I can't help but feel Gammo resents Henry.
Also newsflash to Gammo isn't winning a WS or two the whole point? That isn't just the "base" he dismissively mentions. That's every team in baseball not slavishly following the "tank, don't even pretend to try and be horrible" model of Luhnhow and Theo. His take on the Sale deal continues to annoy me .

Also in uncritical love for the Theo/BC regime he omits the failure to develop .... pitching.

http://www.gammonsdaily.com/peter-gammons-for-those-with-traders-remorse/

I have no idea what Old Hickory is trying to say in that article. Muddling together offseason trades and contenders' deadline deals sure doesn't clarify things.

 

[John Marzano Olympic Hero]

This was a typical, "Hey! Sometimes it sucks trading prospects for established players. Sometimes it's not so bad!" type of articles that Gammons writes. I like them because they often add color to events that happened long ago. For example I had no idea that GMs ranked Johnson third amongst the prospects that DD sent away in exchange for Mark Langston.

That was a fun trade, BTW that took on a life of it's own. I remember in Sports Illustrated there was a picture of Langston pitching and three hats were airbrushed on his head: the Cards, another team I can't recall and the Red Sox. I must've stared at that picture for hours imagining a rotation of Clemens, Langston and Boddicker.

 

[JimD]

The Eckersley example was misleading - Eck would likely have been remembered as a middling pitcher who never lived up to his potential if Tony LaRussa hadn't gotten the idea to convert him later in his career to a closer (and reinvented how closers are deployed). The Indians can hardly be blamed for failing to foresee this.

 

[Cesar Crespo]

I don't see how that article is critical of John Henry or DD?

 

[The Boomer]

The Eckersley example was misleading - Eck would likely have been remembered as a middling pitcher who never lived up to his potential if Tony LaRussa hadn't gotten the idea to convert him later in his career to a closer (and reinvented how closers are deployed). The Indians can hardly be blamed for failing to foresee this.

Eckersley was a funky hurler, like Sale, his whole career. They said his motion would lead to arm injury but it never seriously did. Before 1980, Eckersley was mostly as good as any major league ace starter:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/e/eckerde01.shtml

Even before he was dealt to the Cubs, Eckersley's noticeable performance drop off was likely, at least partially, a product of his worsening alcoholism:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/26517/ECKERSLEY-ADMITS-HES-AN-ALCOHOLIC.html

Eckersley's comeback as a HOF closer.

Sale is arguably better(as a starter) though maybe as crazy as Eck thanks to Sales's wardrobe malfunction tailoring.