Insider Blasts Red Sox On Five-Year Anniversary Of Dave Dombrowski Firing

Some anniversaries are more painful than others...

Jun 24, 2023; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Philadelphia Phillies President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski prior to the game against the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park. Mandatory Credit: John Geliebter-Imagn Images / John Geliebter-Imagn Images

In Major League Baseball, a lot can change in five years.

Rebuilds come to fruition. Championship cores break down and disintegrate. And in the case of the Boston Red Sox, entire front office regimes have run their course.

On Sept. 9, 2019, the Red Sox fired their president of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski, in the middle of a disappointing season. Dombrowski had, however, constructed the greatest team in franchise history, which won 108 regular season games and a World Series, the year before.

It was clear there was a difference in philosophy between ownership and the Dombrowski front office. Successor Chaim Bloom's first task was to trade beloved former Most Valuable Player Mookie Betts. And Bloom only lasted four seasons before he was replaced by Craig Breslow.

Fast forward to 2024, and the Red Sox are on the cusp of missing the playoffs for the fifth time in six years. Meanwhile, Dombrowski's Philadelphia Phillies look to be World Series contenders for the third October in a row.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today took to X to shade the Red Sox for Dombrowski's firing on the five-year anniversary of the move.

"Five years ago today, the Boston Red Sox fired Dave Dombrowski. The Red Sox, 76-67 at the time, were 370-259, with three division titles and a World Series championship in four years under Dombrowski," Nightengale said.

"Since the Dombrowski firing, the Red Sox are 352-356 with three last-place finishes.
Meanwhile, the Phillies will be in the playoffs for the 3rd consecutive season since they hired Dombrowski."

Hindsight is 20/20, and it's hard to speculate how the Red Sox would have fared if Dombrowski had kept the job. Dombrowski is a proven winner, but he's also never been one to spare a dollar, and that was clearly what the Red Sox hoped to do in the seasons that followed.

In 2019, the Red Sox had the highest payroll in the league at $222 million. In 2024, they're 11th, more than $130 million behind the New York Mets, who have shelled out a whopping $307 million in their pursuit of postseason contention.

In the 2019 offseason, Dombrowski handed out lucrative extensions to starting pitchers Chris Sale and Nathan Eovaldi, which was money that could have been spent in theory on Betts. Either Dombrowski thought there would still be money left over for Betts, or had already been told that wouldn't be in the budget.

So it's not necessarily that Red Sox fans are missing Dombrowski. But many sure do miss the days where they spent the kind of money they did when he was in charge.

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