Dombrowski sees stability
Twenty-one years ago, after his Marlins won the World Series, Dave Dombrowski lit the match on the biggest fire sale baseball’s ever seen on a championship team. Nearly everybody had to go and beginning in November Dombrowski dealt away payroll hoggers like Kevin Brown, Moises Alou, Jeff Conine, Robb Nen and Devon White until thenowner Wayne Huizenga was satisfied he could control his losses. Dombrowski, however, was never satisfied. Tearing apart a champion is deflating work, anathema to any executive whose job is to promote winning, and it’s why Dombrowski could never bear uttering the words “defending champions” when it came to the decimated 1998 Marlins. That won’t be the case this November and for the rest of the offseason. The day after his first duck boat parade, Dombrowski offered a first glimpse at the club’s relatively light workload this offseason. The best thing about Dombrowski’s upcoming offseason is that most everyone from this year’s championship club is returning next season. “This will really be the first time my career we’re going to spring training as part of a club that we’d consider the defending champions and we know how hard that is to repeat, but I think efforts will be made to keep as many players together as we can ideally,” said Dombrowski. “But I also know baseball rules, finances, make it difficult because sometimes your guys become free agents and receive offers they can’t refuse. But if you told me today we could bring the same club back together totally and fit in everything, we’d be thrilled with that. “I don’t think that’s probably realistic because you see in free agency and what that brings but I would think we’ll have a real core of our group of players together and we’ll find out and see how many of our guys actually stay.” Of all the free agents who could leave — closer Craig Kimbrel, Steve Pearce, Nathan Eovaldi, Joe Kelly, Drew Pomeranz, Brandon Phillips and Ian Kinsler — perhaps Kimbrel and Kelly top the list. Kimbrel will likely ink an immense multiyear contract that would be too rich for even the Red Sox, and Kelly lifted his stock with his scintillating October that it seems reasonable to expect that some team could give him a closer package. Given that Dombrowski said he considered Matt Barnes and Ryan Brasier as internal candidates for closer, both Kelly and Kimbrel are iffy returns. It’s why Dombrowski singled out the bullpen as the area of greatest need, even though it’s still early to declare so. “I don’t think you can define it until you know who you’re keeping,” said Dombrowski, but if “you lost everybody, which I don’t anticipate happening but if it did, I would think somehow we would need to address our bullpen at that point. Because those couple guys are free agents at that point, Craig is and Joe Kelly is. “Our starting pitching, we’re pretty good there, but you always need to be cognizant of that from a positional player perspective, I think we’re pretty well set.” One mystery position will be second base. The club still does not have a firm handle on whether or not Dustin Pedroia and his surgically repaired knee can be relied upon for a full season, although manager Alex Cora did guarantee that Pedroia would lead off Game 1 of next season and only Game 1. “We need to find out exactly what Pedey’s situation is at second base, I think that’s something that will be a focus for us now,” said Dombroski. “We have talked about it but how does he continue to progress, we’re hopeful he’ll be ready but I don’t really know at this time. But with (Eduardo) Nunez and (Brock) Holt with us already and we’ve got Tzu-Wei Lin behind them, we’ve got some depth there. We’ve got a guy like Michael Chavis that’s coming in up in the organization and gives us a little depth depending on where we decided to play him.” The Red Sox have three catchers — Sandy Leon, Christian Vazquez and Blake Swihart — and Dombrowski hinted that that could allow for the Red Sox to consider moving one of them rather than carry all three like the club did for all of the 2018 season. “We like all three of them — I’d say it’s unlikely but not impossible that you have three guys,” said Dombrowski. “They all have their strengths, but I’m not really sure where that’s going to take us at this point. We’re not looking to trade anybody per se but sometimes it could be a position of strength.” That last part – the “we’re not looking to trade anybody” part — that’s the part that Dombrowski was all too happy to say yesterday. Twenty-one years ago, the complete opposite was his truth.
No major changes for these Red Sox