For Boston GM, another World Series.
HOUSTON — The first time a Dave Dombrowski team won the pennant, long before his Boston Red Sox captured the American League Championship Series here Thursday night, he just wanted his boss to be happy.
In 1997, Dombrowski was general manager of the Florida Marlins and had taken just five seasons to reach the World Series. But the owner, Wayne Huizenga, who had built a fortune in video stores, had warned Dombrowski he might dismantle the roster. Dombrowski hoped the thrill of winning would overcome Huizenga’s wish to save money.
“I remember in Atlanta after we won the NLCS, he and his group went out — they left the lights on — and they ran the bases, all the Blockbuster guys,” Dombrowski said, on the bench at Minute Maid Park before Boston’s series-clinching 4-1 victory over the Astros in Game 5 on Thursday.
“I’m sure I was just completely naïve, but I really didn’t think he was going to do it. I thought, probably, he would change his mind. Then all of a sudden you get the news, and it sort of crushes you.”
A few days after the Marlins beat Cleveland in the World Series, Dombrowski gave his staff the grim directive: every pricey player must go. Frank Wren, a top assistant who now works with Dombrowski for the Red Sox, watched the season highlight reel that week in tears.
“There’s Moises Alou hitting a home run in Cleveland, and I’m thinking, ‘boom, gone,’ ” Wren said. “Al Leiter, pitching Game 7 — gone. Kevin Brown, Gary Sheffield, Bobby Bonilla, every player who was shown on those highlights: ‘He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.’ And you’re thinking, ‘Man, this is a great team. If we can keep this together, we’re going to be good for a while.’ It was heartbreaking.”
All these years later, Dombrowski, 62, is still searching for his next championship. But if he gets it in this World Series, which starts Tuesday at Fenway Park, it could land him in the Hall of Fame. The last two general managers enshrined — Pat Gillick and John Schuerholz — led two franchises to World Series titles. Dombrowski has now guided three to the World Series, including the Detroit Tigers, who lost in 2006 and 2012. “It’s elusive,” Wren said. “There’s very few executives that get multiple opportunities to do that. But Dave’s been one of the best general managers in the game for a long, long time.”
Dombrowski started in the scouting department of the Chicago White Sox in 1978, moving on to the Montreal Expos before running the Marlins and the Tigers, who fired him in August 2015. Within two weeks he had found a job as president of baseball operations for the Red Sox, whose owner, John Henry, had bought the Marlins from Huizenga.
In Miami, Henry had supervised Dombrowski’s rebuild of the Marlins, who won another championship in 2003 after Dombrowski had left to revive the moribund Tigers. In Boston, his mandate was different: build up and win, not tear down and wait.
“You could see we needed some pitching, but when I realistically looked at it, it didn’t look like it was a long build, because there were some very talented position players,” Dombrowski said. “If you made a couple of moves, you could be a much better team.”
His predecessors — first Theo Epstein and then Ben Cherington, who resigned after Dombrowski was hired above him — had left Dombrowski with a trove of young hitters in the organization: Andrew Benintendi, Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Rafael Devers and others.
The Red Sox were willing to spend to supplement that core — their payroll this season was about $230 million, the highest in the majors — and soon after his arrival, Dombrowski signed starter David Price and traded for closer Craig Kimbrel.
The 2016 team won 93 games and the AL East title in David Ortiz’s farewell season, but lost in October when the starters fell flat in the division series. At the winter meetings that December, Dombrowski traded two of the team’s best prospects — pitcher Michael Kopech and infielder Yoan Moncada — to the Chicago White Sox in a package for All-Star left-hander Chris Sale.
“He’s brought a huge level of decisiveness, he’s very convicted in what he believes, and he breaks down complex decisions and really has a way of simplifying them,” said Sam Kennedy, the Red Sox president and chief executive. “Take Chris Sale, for example. There was a lot of debate and dialogue, a lot of worry about Moncada and Kopech and all these prospects, and his answer was: ‘Yeah, but we’re getting Chris Sale.’ It was like: ‘Good point.’ ”
Dombrowski made more moves for 2018, signing J.D. Martinez and trading for Steve Pearce, Nathan Eovaldi and Ian Kinsler during the season. He did it with a staff he could have revamped upon his hiring, but instead kept intact. The group was still stocked with officials who had helped build three World Series winners, most recently in 2013, and Dombrowski wanted to retain their expertise.