Dombro’s not two good
Early playoff exits mark tenure
In the wake of another crushing and brief Division Series loss, it’s hunting season for Red Sox scapegoats.
Naturally, the collective venom stored up in the fangs of Boston sports fans right now is being directed at a losing team’s field general, in this case manager John Farrell.
RED SOX BEAT Michael Silverman
I understand the impulse. I’m not on board with the bull’s eye.
Farrell’s pretty much the low-hanging fruit when it comes to complaining about what went wrong — again — with the Red Sox. Aim a little higher, fans. Dave Dombrowski, president of baseball operations, is the chief architect of the 2017 ballclub, and as such, he earned the right to take responsibility for how and why his team fell short — again — in losing this bestof-five ALDS in four games to the Houston Astros.
Dombrowski was brought to town to finish the job Ben Cherington started when he assembled the young core of position players.
Two full seasons in, Dombrowski still has a lot of work left to do.
He and the very large baseball operations staff underestimated what it would take to make this a better team in 2017 than it was last year.
The Red Sox knew that with the loss of slugger David Ortiz, they would have to build around that core, while hoping a couple of veterans, like Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez, would return to form at the plate. The vets did not pan out as hoped: Sandoval was a bust and Ramirez underachieved.
Going after Chris Sale was a brilliant countermove, the absolute perfect transaction needed to shore up a listing rotation at the perfect time.
In theory, replacing lost run production from Ortiz’ departure with better run prevention made sense.
And in practice, the 2017 Red Sox were good. Good enough to win the AL East — again.
But the 2017 Red Sox were not a better team than the 2016 version, unless you consider one victory in ALDS as something to applaud. I don’t.
The Sox failed to build a playoff-series winner because their biggest regularseason flaw — not enough thump in a not consistent enough offense — was laid bare by the Astros in 3-of-4 games.
The Sox were outscored, 24-18, out-hit, 49-39, outwalked, 14-12, out-doubled, 9-7, out-homered, 8-5, and outslugged, .571-.445. Do I need to go on?
After yesterday’s 5-4 season-ending loss, Mookie Betts found it easy to pinpoint where it went wrong.
“I think they did a great job with the pitching, they did great throwing the ball — we also have to hit more,” Betts said. “We should, we could do it, we were just a little inconsistent especially early. The first couple games we had some opportunities to score and we didn’t. But you have to give it to them.”
Remember, the Red Sox were not going to sweat the loss of a home run threat like Ortiz too much. They had so many good doubles hitters that they were going to score enough runs to get by. Their run production was at 4.85 runs a game, just a tick above the league average 4.71. Their home runs (168) were dead last, their slugging percentage (.407) was next to last.
And yet, they got by and here we are — again — right back where last year’s offseason began: One and done in October.
“I don’t know, it’s not offense or defense, you play as a team — we just weren’t good enough,” Dustin Pedroia said. “They beat us. They played better than we did at the right time. That’s why they’re moving on.”
The starting pitching cratered against the Astros, but amazingly enough, the bullpen, led by David Price, applied enough of a tourniquet to give the offense a chance to catch up.
And the lineup couldn’t — again.
Just as the offense was impossible to predict on a nightly basis how it would perform during the regular season, the hitters in three of the four games were predictably punchless.
Betts sounded lost about what needs to be done for the Sox to field a team capable of winning a playoff series.
“I’m not sure — I haven’t gotten past the ALDS so I’m not sure what it takes or what not,” Betts said. “We did better this year than last year, so hopefully we can continue to get here. I know it’s tough getting here, so as long as we continue to put ourselves in this position, something is going to breakthrough.”
Betts isn’t responsible for discovering the breakthrough.
Neither is Farrell.
It’s up to Dombrowski to do his job better and make the Red Sox better — once again.