So....who is the new GM/head of baseball ops?
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I'm not sure how I missed Houck on that long azz post. He put up 0.7 fWAR in '22, though, so it really doesn't change the calculus much (added to Dalbec's -0.1 fWAR).
They did combine for 2.7 fWAR in '21 & 1.2 in '20...
'The timing of Bloom’s firing came as a surprise to many in the organization'
Feels like this move might have been precipitated by the public embarrassment of $1 Yankees game tickets. Bloom was probably gone by season's end, but I could see that being the final straw for Henry and Werner and a desire to do something NOW.
Compare that to this year, though, when you have...
Duran 2.4
Crawford 1.9
Bello 1.8
Casas 1.7
Houck 1.1
Murphy 0.3
Dalbec 0.2
Rafaela 0.2
Walter 0.0
(9.6 fWAR total)
&, along with the passing of 4 years time, there become less valid excuses for the Major League product.
Duran 2.4
Crawford 1.9
Bello 1.8
Casas 1.7
Houck 1.1
Murphy 0.3
Dalbec 0.2
Rafaela 0.2
Walter 0.0
(9.6 fWAR total)
&, along with the passing of 4 years time, there become less valid excuses for the Major League product.
They were the first of the mostly-viable DD players that came up to the majors.
FWIW, I'm not arguing they were immediately valuable, or deployed in the best ways. My point is that the DD minors were stocked with players that could contribute at the ML level.
Bloom did a lot of work but the narrative of:
1) Cherrington assembled an epically awesome farm system,
2) Dombrowski traded it all in a GFIN splurge and ignored the minors,
3) Bloom started with nothing and built an impressive system.
is just flat-out wrong on all three points.
I suspect people tend to conflate the popular goals and philosophies of, say Cherrington *wanting* to develop the minors, or DD being *willing* to trade for established ML talent, with the actual facts of what they did.
Strictly in terms of handing off a beast of an .org to his successor. . .Theo remains King.
I know people like to knock DD for leaving the cupboard bare (despite that it really wasn’t and he won a shitload of games) but what trades did people not like? Sale, Kimbrel, Eovaldi, Pearce, Pomeranz were all great trades. JD was a great singing. Mitch Moreland. Price was a risky signing that paid off until it didn’t, and the Sale extension backfired. What moves should he not have done though?
In an alternate universe, would have been kind of cool to see how DD would have rebuilt the team had he been given the opportunity.
In an alternate universe, would have been kind of cool to see how DD would have rebuilt the team had he been given the opportunity.
Is there evidence that Byrnes wants to come back? He was not a happy camper when he left Boston previously; I remember an account in one of the earlier books about the Red Sox (Seth Mnookin's Feeding the Monster?) that there was a trade he felt Lucchino threw him publicly under the bus for and Theo had to talk him out of quitting on the spot mid-season. Then there's this:
Yes, Lucchino is no longer in that role. And it was almost 20 years ago. But Lucchino didn't act in a vacuum, and Henry and Werner are still here. Nor is that the last such example of exiting employees feeling hard done by for Byrnes to take note of over the ensuing years, if there was still latent antipathy. Maybe he's over it, but he may well have cold feet.
I remembered this as well honestly, I couldnt remember exactly what it was so thank you for doing the research.
It really seems like Henry and Werner aren't that involved with the team. I am guessing that Lucchino was the person that Byrnes really didnt like (along with pretty much everyone else who worked with Lucky). Time heals all wounds and i am assuming he is still close/has a working relationship with the holdovers from the Theo era
I would put the truth at something like...
1) Cherington brought in a great wave of talent that was instrumental in the '18 title, & then went on a run of bad drafts.
2) Dombrowski traded away many highly regarded prospects in order to put the finishing touches on the '18 title team in a series of trades that worked out due to the title & injuries & the vagaries of prospects, & did not get off to a great start in terms of drafts & IFAs.
3) Bloom started with a massive gap in inherited cost-controlled talent that made competing in the period from '20-'22 much more challenging due to both the failings of the end of the BC era & the beginning of the DD era, & has built an impressive system - but failed to maximize the Major League team in '23 when the DD pipeline actually paid off to a decent extent.
This would be the dumbest cause yet, among those suggested here and elsewhere, for why they fired Bloom. "Public embarrassment" is so far below "does/doesn't help us win" in what I think ownership should prioritize. That said, you could very well be right.
I'm sure it was a bunch of things combined, but another that didn't help was the high profile visit of Cashman and other Yankee officials to Japan to see Yamamoto, that was Sept 9 and Bloom was fired Sept 14.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/09/yoshinobu-yamamoto-throws-no-hitter-with-brian-cashman-in-front-row/
It's pretty easy to imagine Henry seeing that and thinking 'hmm, if we really want to go after Yamamoto full throttle, maybe Chaim isn't the guy to be in charge for that?'.
A little counterbalance on the Byrnes in San Diego great drafting narrative...
View: https://twitter.com/ChangeThePadres/status/1704559351745364026
0 good picks outside the 1st round.
View: https://twitter.com/ChangeThePadres/status/1704559351745364026
0 good picks outside the 1st round.
IMO, it's a pretty nondescript role. There must be some level of continuity between the organization and the incoming PBO. An understanding of how/why certain decisions were previously made should be helpful in making certain assessments as the team moves forward. BOH has a title, but it will be up to the new PBO to decide what his actual duties will be. I think it would be foolish and incredibly short sighted for the ownership group to eliminate people who can potentially provide valuable information to the new hire(s).
I'd say a more accurate narrative is:
1) Theo Epstein had an historically productive draft and left a fully stocked farm system for Cherington.
2) Cherington wisely held onto those prospects, while using a canny FA strategy to win a 2013 WS title, then began to transition the Epstein wave of talent in. He had narrow-band success in drafting and acquiring young cost-controlled talent (Benintendi, Devers, E-Rod) but otherwise created a talent gap in the system. After 2013, his ML FA choices were questionable. At best.
3) Dombrowski traded away what ultimately proved to be meh major league talent (if at all) for astoundingly productive veterans, cumulating in the 2018 WS title. He didn't get off to a great start in minor-league class building for the first year, but ultimately acquired a far greater number of useful MiL prospects than Cherington did, restocking the lower minors. By the end of his tenure, he had a top-heavy and expensive team (due to extensions), which also suffered from the Cherington talent-gap.
4) Bloom inherited a MiL system which was lower-minors propsect heavy. He productively restocked the minors through drafting, IFAs, and conservative trades. His ML FA signings were generally good on an individual basis, but he fielded a series of flawed ML teams, which were sidelined by injuries and often lacked depth.
Ok.
As long as we can also note that DD did not seem to embrace a modern perspective on the development process, I can stipulate to the rest.
"Agree" is a strong word. But I'm willing to have that version submitted to the Court (of public opinion) in lieu of further back & forth on the exact language of the proposal when I am more or less on board with the sentiments conveyed.
Those quotes in that Athletic article to me give some credence to the idea of Cora moving to the FO that some here have speculated.
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And it's so very very weird he didn't trade them, plus Duran, Rafaela, and Crawford for relief pitching in 2019 right?
Instead, the short-sighted git traded Elio Prado and Noelberth Romero to the Orioles for Andrew Cashner. Who unfortunately stopped being good when we got him.
But man, Elio Prado and Noelberth Romero! That's just gutting. Gutting. I have no idea how anyone survived as a fan. I know I vowed to never forget.
Seems pretty speculative. He didn’t trade any of those guys, Devers, Bogaerts, Benintendi, E-Rod, etc.
Dombrowski has a decent shot at ending up in the HOF, and had a pretty incredible run here.
Not really sure why he is so disliked. He didn’t make many bad trades.
Price signing was risky, but kind of the price you had to pay (no pun intended) to land an ace who probably didn’t really want to play here. Which seems like what the next guy might have to do.
Is there a way that DD could have built up the farm, still won a WS, and left the Sox system deeper than it was? Avoiding the Sale extension would have helped, but given the Sox lack of pitching at the time, wouldn’t that money have been reallocated to other pitchers?
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Exactly they had a collection of sub-A lottery tickets that they would have had to clean out to acquire a MLB player. That’s the problem, when all your talent is in the FCL and the DSL other teams require four or five of them to deal their MLB player. I’m not sure why people are struggling with this.
I’m not sure why anyone would argue this. Because that’s exactly what happened. I’ve had my problems with some of Bloom’s trades (like the gawdawful Renfroe/JBJ deal), he certainly built the system and some of the players added on his watch have made rapid progress (like Anthony, who’s Boston’s best prospect) through the minors. I’m hoping his successor is better on the trade front while still being good on the draft front. But I’ve been fine with the team moving on from Bloom.
No one dislikes him. The only critique I have of him is that he tended to overpay in trade because he felt he was trading away guys that wouldn’t pan out. But, again, once you’ve cleaned out the high minors trading for MLB talent gets more expensive. And he did tend to overpay for pitching, even when he shouldn’t have (like the unnecessary Sale extension that ultimately forced the breakup of that squad).
DD gave up a lot of guys who were well-regarded in deals. It is interesting that few of them amounted to anything---one can quite reasonably go where Romine did, that DD correctly evaluated who was good. A different view would be that (to a fair degree) low-mid minors guys who are not elite prospects are essentially a numbers game, and giving up a lot of them hurts the chances you get quality MLB guys at the other end.
I have not studied it closely enough to say---though many of us who follow NFL know that essentially draft evaluation beyond the very top boils down to "having more shots means you're more likely to succeed" for even the best GMs.
I agree with others that DD's biggest issue was overpaying in FA; I am less sure than some that his developmental track record is even average. But it is very hard to dispute he was effective at building the MLB roster, which is more than one can say for Bloom unfortunately.
I have not studied it closely enough to say---though many of us who follow NFL know that essentially draft evaluation beyond the very top boils down to "having more shots means you're more likely to succeed" for even the best GMs.
I agree with others that DD's biggest issue was overpaying in FA; I am less sure than some that his developmental track record is even average. But it is very hard to dispute he was effective at building the MLB roster, which is more than one can say for Bloom unfortunately.
I think the Sale extension is really the only fair thing to complain about. I don't know anything really but I remember thinking it was probably a bad idea. But then I remember a bunch of posters here getting into the details and convincing me that it was a very fair if not under market deal so I ended up on board with it.
To add to the chorus, I don't agree with this at all. Dombrowski was a very good talent evaluator.
As others have pointed out, his issue was that he wasn't great along the margins in trades. He would gladly include the 4th prospect where most GM's would draw the line at 3. That amount of quantity going out constantly really can hurt the depth of a system...but his hit rate on which prospects to include is pretty amazing.
True, exactly which guys he would have traded is speculative, because we can't perform laboratory experiments in real life. But, he did trade away highly regarded prospects (e.g. were it not for injuries, Kopech and Moncada would look like big losses).
From what I read at the time, the Sox fired DD because he wanted to stay on the path of trading away prospects to "win now." I'm glad the Sox fired him when they did because to keep on winning he would have had to trade away prospects like Devers, Bogaerts, E-Rod, etc., which would have been the wrong way to go.
I think the main issue was he didn't really care about the margins anywhere - trades, acquisitions of flyers, player development, etc. Which all adds up.
The highs were super high, though.
No, it was that after the title there was no way forward except to break up the team as they didn’t have the chips to keep adding ML talent.
Wasn’t the way forward to trade some of their talented expensive players for cheaper players- which is what Bloom did- so well according to many?
Ultimately, acquiring front line pitching is very risky- either via trade (Sale) or FA (Price). DD delivered and then paid the price when these guys inevitably broke down.
Now, the Sox need frontline pitching again. Two excellent starters, some say. Maybe this time it will work out differently- but I’d take another championship in the next four years even if we have to endure an 84-85 win team at the end, and be happy with that outcome.
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I don't recall DD trading talented, expensive players for cheaper players. I don't think Bloom's strength had anything to do with this, either.
But, yes, the Sox absolutely need frontline pitching again. The Sox could try to wait on their prospects (W. Gonzalez, Drohan, Mata, Song, Houck, Crawford) to become these guys, or they can try to go out and get them now. Personally, I think that the team, as constructed, can compete next year, so they should acquire two starters right now (and it something goes wrong, they can try to fill a hole at the trade deadline). This isn't something I would have said going into 2023, though, because there were two many question marks on this roster.
It seems like we all agree on the next move. If this were college football we could start putting formal proposals together and sending them ourselves to Yamamoto's team. Sigh...
Saying that Moncada and Kopech would be big losses except for injuries is some impressive mental gymnastics.
Dombrowski built teams that were very top heavy with very little depth on the 40. I maintain that your original point, and the point you keep repeating, is incredibly wrong. He wouldn’t have traded the guys that you are saying he definitely would have (Devers, Casas, etc). But he also wouldn’t have got the type of players that Bloom specialized in. The cheap depth that can provide 1-2 WAR for very little cost and no acquisition cost
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No.
His problem was that he wanted a short burst of success at the expense of continued success.
Not impressing me with your mental gymnastics here. Both of these guys have had success at the MLB level when healthy. It can't get much simpler than that.
Arguably, it's that "problem" that made him available for Henry to hire him in the first place. He sold out hard trying to get the Tigers a championship. It's not hard to think that ownership here wanted to avoid going down the road the Tigers have been on since ~2015.
He would probably say he wanted continued success too, but the Sox' talent was quickly running dry -- for a variety of reasons, not just related to Dombro's years -- and his vision for continued success was not very robust. Splitting hairs...
Well, yes, he was given the task of breaking up the team, which is what people wouldn’t ever forgive him for. He had varying levels of success with it, he made some costly mistakes at the major league level the last couple of years, and those are why he’s brushing up his resume today. Dombrowski’s tenure ended because he wasn’t the right guy for the job of breaking up the major league team for young, cost controlled talent. Efficiency requires cost controlled talent so that you can take gambles on high priced talent. And your youth corps doesn’t need to be superstar level players, they just need to be averagish players so that you can pay guys like Rafi.
Dave Dombrowski took over a Tigers team that won 66 games the year before he got there. He then spent four years building them into a winner (oh huh, look at that: the same amount of time Bloom had with the Sox. . . ) and then kept them winners for the next 9 years. What a short-term thinking sell out!
Sure- but when DD got here, the team wasn’t very good- largely because they didn’t have pitching, which you really need to contend. So he went out and got two front line pitchers (and a closer) and the cost was high. When all those guys got hurt / were ineffective, the team wasn’t great (yet was still competitive). But do the Sox win without Price / Sale / Eovaldi? What moves that DD made should he not have?
The Sox situation right now isn’t that far off from what it was when DD got here- and there are many pleas to go get two front line pitchers. If that happens and these guys get hurt or at ineffective at some point in the long deals it will take to land them, which will almost surely happen, it will probably get the next guy canned.
FWIW Sox Prospects suggested that Romero would , and should be, a top candidate.
Is there a source for this? (I mean, I assume Dombrowski hasn't confided his feelings to you, but what do I know?)
Who’s complaining about winning the World Series? What people keep pointing out that the lost in the past crowd keep dancing around is that the Red Sox as is in 2019 had run their course. There was nothing left to trade without emptying out the FCL & DSL rosters. They had an injured pitcher with a 5/145 extension, Price amidst a 5/160 contract, a superstar requiring a huge extension, and a payroll that would see them with declining draft and IFA signing pools at a time when they were in desperate need of young, cost controlled talent.
The question the ownership had was whether or not Dombrowski was the right man to tear down that roster and rebuild. They decided the answer was no. It was that simple. They brought Dombrowski in to win a title and he did exactly what he was hired to do. But at the end of 2019 there was a different task, and they chose a guy they thought could do it. He did part of it very well, he restocked the farm. But he was not as good at other aspects of the job and so he’s now out of work.
I mean that’s what people still carrying a torch for Dombrowski keep saying. I was just taking them at their word. If you want to say that he was just lucky, fine. I really don’t care. Dombrowski had one job, and he did it.
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