Red Sox fire Dombrowski

[Auggie]

The Boston Red Sox fired president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski on Sunday and have elevated senior vice president Raquel Ferreira and assistant general managers Eddie Romero, Brian O'Halloran and Zack Scott to jointly lead their baseball operations department for the rest of the season.

Dombrowski, 63, was the architect behind Boston's 2018 World Series championship and had a contract that ran through the 2020 season. The Red Sox are in the midst of a disappointing campaign that has them eight games back of the second wild-card spot in the American League and 17½ games behind the first-place New York Yankees in the AL East.

SNIP

Dombrowski, who was hired in August 2015, had embraced the Red Sox's championship-or-bust mandate and used the team's ample farm system to acquire star players and build a go-for-broke major league roster. His hiring of Cora, trades for pitchers Chris Sale and Craig Kimbrel and signings of J.D. Martinez and David Price supplemented a homegrown core to deliver the team's fourth championship in 15 seasons.

Issues with a $200 million payroll are baseball's definition of a first-world problem, but they don't lessen the difficulty of what Dombrowski's successors will inherit -- particularly with the possibility of trading Betts, who is expected to make well over $25 million in arbitration.

MORE: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27573900/red-sox-fire-dombrowski-one-season-title

Initially surprised to hear of this, and then I read about the payroll commitments.

[hughee99]

1. As soon as they signed Nate Eovaldi to a 4 year deal at $17 million per year, I knew that

the Sox would be firing him unless they at least went to another world series.

https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/boston-red-sox/nathan-eovaldi-8761/statistics/

The Sale deal was even worse. Sale's a better pitcher, but he's 30, fragile, and costs roughly $25 million a year (it varies by year) until 2025.

https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/boston-red-sox/chris-sale-7278/

And now he can't afford to resign their two most productive players, Mookie (who can walk after next year) and J.D. Martinez (who can opt out at the end of this year).

The Sox are now in the salary hell that the Yankees were in about 5 or so years ago with their aging overpaid players.

They didn't get stuck with over the hill players like the yankees did, they signed players closer to their prime that just can't stay on the field.

[Auggie]

2. It's a no-win situation for GMs

You don't want to break up a winner or trade fan favorites. So you go with a core group and sign FAs to fill gaps in the line-up, hoping to repeat the magic for another year or two.

Bobby Evans in San Francisco tried the same thing after 2016 and it didn't work out. Contracts weren't as large as the Red Sox, but did saddle San Francisco with several hurt, or aging, under-performing hitters.

The Athletics get a lot of criticism for trading away their star players as they becomes FAs, but it helps them rebuild every few years. Same with Cleveland.

[hughee99]

3. It is a tough balance, especially after winning a world series.

The problem is, you can't succeed with those huge contracts unless you have a strong farm system, which the Sox don't. The Sox make a lot of money and have the advantage over other teams being able to overpay some players, but you can't tie up $100 million on pitching if you don't have a couple of guys on rookie contracts to balance it out. When you're $20 million+ pitchers pitch like #4 starters or can't even stay on the field, it quickly turns into a disaster.

Both the Yankees and the Dodgers found themselves in a similar spot a few years ago, saddled with big contracts, and it took them both a few years to dig out. It helps to be a high revenue team, small market teams take even longer to dig out of this sort of mess, which is why they don't usually go in for these huge contracts, and as a result, can't take the risk on big name studs.

Now they're saddled with Sale, Price and Eovaldi, with an empty farm system. The next GM is going to spend at least 2 years cleaning up the mess as best he can. I wouldn't be surprised to see J.D. Martinez walk after this year (or maybe after next year), and expect that Betts is going to be traded for prospects. They know they can't afford to keep him, it's now just a matter of what they'll get in return.