Phillies give top job to Dombrowski
Ex-Red Sox boss named president of baseball ops
PHILADELPHIA » Whether rebuilding or reloading, small market or large, Dave Dombrowski has been a big success at every major league stop.
His next challenging project: a Philadelphia Phillies team that’s gone nine years without a winning record.
Dombrowski joined the Phillies as president of baseball operations on Friday.
“This is a great day for the Philadelphia Phillies,” managing partner John Middleton said in a statement. “David Dombrowski is one of the most accomplished executives this great game has ever seen, and we are thrilled to welcome him to Philadelphia.”
Andy MacPhail is the Phillies’ current president and has planned to retire after the 2021 season. He said in October he would be willing to step aside sooner to make way for a new baseball operations boss.
Philadelphia reassigned general manager Matt Klentak within the organization after finishing 28-32 last season. Joe Girardi remains as manager.
“Between David and Joe Girardi, we now have two of the best people in place to set us on the path back to where we want to be, and that is the postseason and contending for world championships,” Middleton said.
The 64-year-old Dombrowski has led baseball operations for four teams over more than three decades in the majors, taking a trio of franchises to the World Series. His clubs have won four pennants and two Series titles.
Dombrowski was the youngest general manager in baseball history when he took over the Montreal Expos in 1988 at 31 years old, and he played a major role in putting the small-market club on a path to contention with its fruitful farm system.
He joined the expansion Florida Marlins in 1991, two years before their first game, and was the chief architect of their 1997 World Series championship. Then he oversaw an ownershipmandated fire sale, helping to ultimately rebuild a Marlins squad that won another title in 2003, although
Dombrowski had left for Detroit by then.
Dombrowski turned a Tigers team that lost an American League-record 119 games in 2003 into a perennial winner. Detroit won four straight division titles from 2011-14 and AL pennants in 2006 and 2012 before cutting him loose after the 2015 season.
He joined the Red Sox as president
of baseball operations the following August and made a number of key acquisitions — including ace Chris Sale, slugger J.D. Martinez and manager Alex Cora — that led to Boston’s 2018 World Series championship.
Dombrowski was fired by the Red Sox in September 2019 amid a disappointing follow-up to the championship run.