Ex-Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski is out in Boston — and he only got a single strike.
Less than a year after he put together a roster which won a World Series last season, Dombrowski quietly was cut loose by the Red Sox on Sunday night.
This is the first year a team that Dombrowski, who took over the Red Sox in August of 2015, put together will (likely) miss the playoffs as the Red Sox are eight games out of second wild-card spot in the American League and trail the New York Yankees by 17½ games in the AL East.
In each of Dombrowski’s previous three seasons running the team, the Red Sox made the playoffs and finished in first place.
But given that lack of moves Dombrowski made this season — he essentially just brought back the same roster and did nothing to improve a bullpen that struggled mightily last season outside of the playoffs — the firing isn’t really all that much of a surprise.
In the 63-year-old’s place, senior vice president Raquel Ferreira and assistant general managers Eddie Romero, Brian O’Halloran and Zack Scott will jointly lead their baseball operations department for the rest of 2019. Ferreira is the highest-ranking woman ever in a Major League Baseball team’s baseball operations department, according to ESPN.
Following Sunday’s loss to the Yankees, Red Sox manager Alex Cora said he was “surprised and shocked” to hear Dombrowski was done in Boston. “This is a guy that gave me a chance to come here and be a big-league manager,” Cora said. “It’s one of those things that caught me. They just told me, so I’m not ready to talk about it.”
The Red Sox, who led the majors in luxury tax payments this season and have $79 million in salary devoted to disappointing pitchers Chris Sale, David Price and Nathan Eovaldi over the next three seasons alone, need to decide what to do with last season’s MVP, Mookie Betts, and evidently they feel Dombrowski is not the man for the job.
Betts is a free agent after next season and Boston must decide if they want to try to sign him to a long-term deal or trade him for draft picks.
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