Dave Dombrowski out as Boston team president

The Boston Red Sox have fired Dave Dombrowski, their president of baseball operations, it was announced late last night. The Boston Red Sox won 108 games in 2018 and capped the season off with a World Series Championship, but the team is 76-67 in 2019, and appears unlikely to make the playoffs.

This is a rather dramatic move from the BoSox, who brought Dombrowski in in August, 2015, just two weeks after he parted ways with the Detroit Tigers, where he had been in charge since 2002. The Red Sox won 93 games and the American League East title in both 2016 and 2017 before winning it all last year.

Boston has the highest payroll in baseball this year, with Cots putting the payroll at $236 million, while not playing to that level. Dombrowski’s m.o. has been to spend big and trade prospects in order to try to win now, and those moves resulted in the acquisitions of Craig Kimbrel and Chris Sale and the signings of David Price, J.D. Martinez and Nathan Eovaldi during Dombrowski’s tenure.

However, the team’s farm system is no longer strong, limiting Boston’s ability to make moves or promote from within to supplement its current veteran group, and when Boston didn’t spend much this offseason, it left the team with a top-heavy squad that lacked depth, particularly pitching depth. Despite having won it all in 2018, Dombrowski has apparently been tagged to take the fall for the disappointing 2019 campaign.