The Red Sox last week named Dave Dombrowski their new President of Baseball Operations, and the team had to act "quickly," because Dombrowski "was not going to be unemployed for long, given his standing in the game," according to Peter Abraham of the BOSTON GLOBE. Following Dombrowski being fired from his role with the Tigers, Red Sox Chair Tom Werner said, "Somebody called me about an hour later and said, ‘Are you thinking about Dave Dombrowski?’ At that time we weren’t. We were thinking about how to strengthen baseball operations. We had talked to [GM Ben Cherington] about bringing in a pitching evaluator.” Abraham noted within a few hours, Werner and Red Sox Owner John Henry "shifted their focus to the idea of hiring Dombrowski." Dombrowski said, "It was very quick. Once I talked to John, he talked to me about wanting to get together with his people." Werner: "Dave was considering lots of opportunities." Abraham noted one topic "discussed at length was Dombrowski's willingness to use advanced statistics as an evaluation tool." Dombrowski "outlined his experience with metrics going back to 1978" as an assistant with the White Sox, assuring Henry that he would "use analytics as part of his decision-making process." Henry called Dombrowski on Aug. 14 and said that the ownership group was "unanimous in wanting to hire him." Contract negotiations started "almost immediately and were concluded within 36 hours." Dombrowski then "agreed to a long-term deal that made him one of the industry’s top-paid executives." Werner: "I'll say this, we want him to be here many years" (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/22).
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN: In Boston, Christopher Gasper wrote only "trumpets were missing from Dombrowski’s Fenway Park coronation" on Friday. Red Sox President-in-waiting Sam Kennedy "spent most of Dombrowski’s press conference as the equivalent of someone who had been cropped out of a photo." Baseball operations "will be insulated from Fenway’s other Green Monster, the business side of the club, and Dombrowski won’t have to butt heads with the trenchant and immensely talented" Larry Lucchino, who is "transitioning to another role to make way for the well-regarded Kennedy." But Gasper wrote "How much better off would the Sox be if they had [Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo] Epstein and his Brookline High classmate and friend Kennedy leading the club into the future? The baseball operations apparatus would remain intact. They wouldn’t be starting over with an outsider and uncertainty" (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/22).
BEN THERE, DONE THAT: Cherington, who is stepping down after the season, said of how much of his time is spent dealing with Red Sox ownership, "Sometimes most of it, really. That’s a little bit different in every place. It needs to be there to some degree everywhere, because owners have the biggest stake of anyone in the organization." Regarding his future plans, Cherington said, “One of the things that I quickly look back on -- I do feel like a couple of mistakes we made in the last few years is when we got in a rush to do something. So that’s the one thing I’m going to try not to do, to be rushed" (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/22). In Boston, Michael Silverman wrote Cherington "was a class act all the way." A 17-year employee of the Red Sox who "climbed each and every rung of the baseball operations ladder, Cherington never lost his considerable cool, never lost sight of his principles and never relaxed his discipline." Those traits "mostly served him well." Silverman: "Perhaps, in ways we are not privy to, they let him down" (BOSTON HERALD, 8/23).
AND THE BEAT GOES ON: In Boston, Nick Cafardo noted Dombrowski is in the process of finding a GM, and in some cases, the GM is "essentially the assistant GM, but with a bigger paycheck." The guy in Boston who "makes the deals and signs the free agents will be Dombrowski." He is "not going to relinquish those duties; that’s why he took the job and didn’t take on any business duties, as was the case in Detroit." The Red Sox’ new model "will be very similar" to that of the Cubs (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/23). Also in Boston, Dan Shaughnessy writes, "No one knows what’s going to happen. People have lost their jobs. People are afraid they are going to lose their jobs. The only certainty is uncertainty. And that is a good thing" (BOSTON GLOBE, 8/24).
