OT: Dombrowski era over in Boston?
Yes. Yes it is. Dombrowski is out in Boston.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27573900/red-sox-fire-dombrowski-one-season-title
September 9th, 2019 at 2:13 AM ^
Well, I guess this proves there are only two outcomes in professional sports, you win a championship or you get fired.
September 9th, 2019 at 2:44 AM ^
Wow. Boston is stupid.
September 9th, 2019 at 8:26 AM ^
Or they saw the writing on the wall and got out early instead of letting Dombrowski make another couple of bad long-term decisions in order to maybe get a WC spot next season.
He helped bring Detroit back from the absolute bottom, but the 100+ loss season they have going on right now is due in large part to the Tigers letting him make these types of dumb decisions.
September 9th, 2019 at 8:33 AM ^
The Tigers ownership didn't let him do anything. They wanted, and told him to do what he did.
September 9th, 2019 at 9:35 AM ^
Illitch wanted a title before he passed I get, but that didn't mean he needed to gut the farm system to do so. Lots of teams win titles without submarining their future that way, and to say that Dombrowski was just doing the bidding of ownership minimizes his role in those decisions.
September 9th, 2019 at 9:40 AM ^
Come on now. Dombrowski got fired because he started the rebuild process before ownership wanted him to in Detroit. This was written about in multiple sources when it happened. We then spent 2 seasons under Avila trying to contend and couldn't. Even Cabrera's contract was a Mike Ilitch special. Dombrowski advised against it and was overruled.
September 9th, 2019 at 2:44 AM ^
There's a third, but it involves 62 years, predates Roman numerals, and includes the liberal application of Honolulu Blue.
September 9th, 2019 at 3:40 AM ^
Roman numerals are much older than 62 years.
September 9th, 2019 at 7:51 AM ^
And so are Lions championship celebrations
September 9th, 2019 at 8:59 AM ^
the joke
-----------------------------------
your head
September 9th, 2019 at 10:01 AM ^
Haha...sure.
September 9th, 2019 at 3:55 AM ^
As a Red Sox fan for over 60 years, I could almost see this coming after they got off to a slow start and languished slightly above a .500 record for most of the year. I worry that history might be repeating itself with a long playoff drought after winning four championships between the ‘04 and ‘18 seasons.
It doesn’t take much to be reminded of what happened to the Red Sox after they won the 1918 World Series and had to trade their star player. It took them 28 years before they reached the World Series again and 86 years before they won the World Series again. From 1919 through 1933, they finished last in the eight-team American League in nine seasons and higher than sixth in only two seasons when they finished fifth. They won fewer than 80 games every year between 1919 and 1936.
Thanks to Dombrowski’s mismanagement, I suspect that the Red Sox are about to become not much better than what the Tigers are today, especially if they’re forced to trade their best player, 2018 MVP Mookie Betts. They have the worst farm system in the Major Leagues. They’re saddled with over-priced, unloadable contracts of some underperforming starting pitchers (David Price, Nathan Eovaldi, Chris Sale) who helped them win a World Series just a year ago, but who now force them to use six or seven relievers in order to get through a nine-inning game in three of every five games.
They’re facing an arbitration case this winter for weak-hitting center fielder Jackie Bradley, Jr., and if they trade Betts for three or four long-term prospects and lose most of their free agents (starter Rick Porcello, first basemen Steve Pearce and Mitch Moreland, and utilityman Brock Holt) this winter, they’ll still have a bloated payroll with no star players other than shortstop Xander Bogaerts and third basemam Rafael Devers.
September 9th, 2019 at 6:08 AM ^
That is indeed Dombrowski's MO. As a fan, you get a few really enjoyable years but you pay for those years for a decade.
September 9th, 2019 at 7:41 AM ^
Yeah, because Dombrowski has exactly one skill as a GM--identify the best player(s) on the free agent market and overpay him/them by 20%.
A chimp in a suit could've built a successful team with the payrolls he ran in Detroit and Boston.
September 9th, 2019 at 8:07 AM ^
I'm sure your resume will be submitted before lunch.
September 9th, 2019 at 8:24 AM ^
I said "a chimp in a suit." I'm mos def not wearing a suit.
September 9th, 2019 at 10:22 AM ^
Come on, this is one of the dumbest baseball takes I've seen here.
First of all, Dombrowski built a World Series winner in Miami, and definitely didn't have a particularly high payroll back then.
Then he came to Detroit and rebuilt the worst team in AL history to a consistent winner over nearly a decade. The payrolls got high as time was running out and guys like JV needed big contracts. By the way, that JV contract doesn't look like much of an overpay anymore, he's still dominating into the last year of that contract. But he drafted and traded for guys to build those teams, and pretty successfully identified where there was value. He wasn't perfect but his batting average is a lot better than most other teams.
For example, He got the best hitter of a generation (Cabrera) for a bunch of prospects that never amounted to much. Also, he traded an average CF (Granderson) for another ace pitcher (Scherzer) and decent CF (Austin Jackson) who he later was able to flip for a year of David Price, and that then turned into Daniel Norris and Matt Boyd, who lead the team in IP this season. He went above slot to draft and sign Porcello, got a few good years out of him, then traded him for Cespedes, then traded Yo for Fulmer, who TJ notwithstanding is still a part of the future of this team.
September 9th, 2019 at 12:05 PM ^
He also helped build up the excellent Montreal teams of the early '90s. They had the best record in baseball in 1994 before the strike.
September 10th, 2019 at 10:39 AM ^
They didn't bring DD to Boston to develop their minor league system.
They brought him in to win immediately.
He did.
Mission accomplished--but now they have contract nightmare challenges to rival their vanquished farm club talent...............exit stage left......
September 9th, 2019 at 11:51 AM ^
Don’t forget draining the farm system of talent, a concurrent MO
September 9th, 2019 at 8:05 AM ^
Somewhat agree. Last season was the ultimate chicken salad year, this year everything was chicken shit. Law of averages. Overpaying Pearce and Eovaldi was bad, should've targeted that $ for bullpen. Between Pedroia, Panda and those 2, $55M for nothing. Price and Sale have been bad, jury is definitely out on the Sale signing. JBJ, good luck! If Mookie doesn't commit, have to think about trading him. Looks like nothing is stopping him from entering free agency. Somebody has to pay and Dombrowski was the easy target. The real problem with the Sox is ownership, McFly and Werner have no clue. Maybe they'll fire Remdog for the late season rating collapse on NESN.
September 9th, 2019 at 8:11 AM ^
Say what? Ownership has no clue? Four championships in 14 years!
September 9th, 2019 at 8:47 AM ^
As both a long-time Red Sox fan who's grateful for those four World Series championships in the past 16 years AND a long-time Arsenal fan who's having to suffer through Liverpool's rejuvenation under the ownership of the Fenway Sports Group (the same owners as the Red Sox) and the Gunners' decline in the past three seasons while Liverpool's undefeated and sitting in first place in the EPL this season, I don't think that the Red Sox ownership has "no clue." Ask Liverpool fans how they felt about winning the Champions League final last June. Read this. 
September 9th, 2019 at 8:23 AM ^
I live in Boston now and the couple fans I talk to all seemed to know this would happen but figured it was the cost of a title. But this was vintage Dombrowski in how he just kept overpaying veterans with contracts you knew wouldn't she well.
That said, Boston has so many resources that it's hard to see them take a long term hit like the Tigers. They'll have a couple of down years but they seem to have good scouts and it's a place that can attract great talent on and off the field.
September 9th, 2019 at 9:02 AM ^
The Red Sox currently have the worst farm system among all 30 Major League teams. LINK Those "resources" have dried up.
They're also missing their long-time spiritual leaders. David Ortiz is retired and still recuperating from surgery after being shot during an contract-killing assassination that went awry last June in the Dominican Republic. LINK Dustin Pedroia never fully recovered from a knee injury suffered in April 2017, thanks to Manny Machado's takeout slide and he might not play again. LINK
September 9th, 2019 at 9:45 AM ^
Yes, the farm system is gutted but you can fill that up quickly especially if you are willing to spend some money. And the group running the Sox know that place prints money in a way other teams maybe don't, and they don't seem remotely afraid to pay their way out of trouble. So maybe it means you trade some bad assets off your team (and pay a decent chunk of their salaries) in exchange for young players to replenish your system or serve as the next round of reinforcements. It's still a destination for FAs, and with how the market has been the past couple of years a focus on getting cheaper veterans who would otherwise command higher salaries but (for various reasons) seem to have depressed value could also stem the tide. Detroit rather clearly said once that window closed they weren't going to spend a ton of money; they have one of the lower payrolls in baseball for a reason.
As for the spiritual leader stuff, they won a title last year without either of those guys. And Pedroia's injury, while obviously an accelerant, was part of a general downturn in his play for a couple of years (save for 2016, when he did blip up).
The Red Sox in the short term are going to suffer, but a team with a payroll close to a quarter of a billion and a seeming willingness to keep that going isn't likely to stay that way for long.
September 9th, 2019 at 9:32 AM ^
Yep, the Yankees went through the same. The 2009 championship team was the result of insane overspending on older talent that had a year or two left before they fell off the cliff, and the team did exactly that. Won a title, but then spent the next 5-7 years trying to get out from under those terrible contracts and over the hill players.
September 9th, 2019 at 6:44 AM ^
At this point can the tigers take him back?
September 9th, 2019 at 7:06 AM ^
Do you think if he stayed with the tigers any longer, could we have salvaged one World Series? Or had he run out of trades/trade bait to build a contender?
I’m so torn by how much we suck now, how well some of our former players are doing outside Detroit, and by how much Avila seems to blow that I miss Dombrowski and wish he was back here. But I know a lot of what we struggle with is caused by Dombrowski’s method to build a championship team.
September 9th, 2019 at 8:00 AM ^
Boston fired Dombrowski just to name four people as interim GM? How does that work? They can't all be the acting GM.
September 9th, 2019 at 10:17 AM ^
Sounds like a mutiny and Dave was outnumbered.
September 9th, 2019 at 8:05 AM ^
He basically did what he did in Detroit but got a title out of it. He guys your farm system, seemingly can't pick up a bullpen to save his life, and has limited creativity if the answer isn't "pay a lot of money" or "mortgage the future" to fix problems. He's a very good GM for those teams that want to win now but he's not a builder/sustainer and Boston can get a better GM for that role.
September 9th, 2019 at 8:26 AM ^
Maybe he can return to Detroit and get a front office job with the Lions---he couldn't possibly be as bad as the clowns who have run that franchise for the last 6 decades.
September 9th, 2019 at 9:48 AM ^
This seems stupid to me. They bring the guy in and he immediately builds a world series winner. This season has been a disappointment, but it isn't like they are in last place. They are over .500 with multiple injuries to key players. I don't follow Boston enough to know what the ownership's opinion on the payroll is, but a 200 million payroll seems normal for the big teams in MLB. Unless Dombrowski was actively disobeying his payroll mandate, what changed?
And all these people acting like this is the Dave special, how long have you been following the MLB? Dombrowski made his name doing the exact opposite of what he did in Boston. In Miami he was constantly rebuilding. He identified the talent, developed it into a world series winner, then had to trade it all way due to his owner being an asshat, and then repeated the cycle. He built Detroit from the ground up and then started the prospect sale to contend. He even knew when to cut bait but Ilitch didn't so he fired him.
He'll get hired again and that team will become a contender.
September 9th, 2019 at 10:16 AM ^
The Tigers should bring him back as a trade consultant. That way he could show Al how to properly trade rape desperate organizations. Get a few Pudge, Polanco, Guillen type players and jumpstart this rebuild.
September 9th, 2019 at 10:56 AM ^
Maybe tigers can get him
September 9th, 2019 at 11:03 AM ^
He did his job, sold the future to win it all now. Dealt all their future prospects, saddled the team with huge contracts for diminishing future returns on aging stars, got the championship. Just like the tigers, except for that last part. If only we'd picked up a viable closer or two instead prince fielder.
September 9th, 2019 at 12:06 PM ^
I would hire him back if I were the Tigers.
September 9th, 2019 at 1:54 PM ^
the thing is it's hard to argue against trading a championship for a bit of purgatory. Houston Astros were terrible for a long time. Remember when the Braves had championship quality teams every year and no one went to the games? In soccer, the NY Red Bulls have won 3 supporters shields but no championship and have been losing fans for years. Last year they were the best team in regular season history, but they also started covering empty seats with tarps.
In a vacuum, perhaps a few people would say they want sustained success for 10 years, but most people will truly acknowledge it is not enough.
That said, perhaps UM is a bit different. Everyone loved Bo, though he never won a Natty, and Lloyd is less loved even though he did.