When the 2022 Red Sox season graciously came to a close earlier this month, the organization’s leaders sat at a podium and explained what they needed to do next.
The answer was obvious: sign Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers to long-term extensions. But it has to be a deal that makes sense for both sides, chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said.
Then he pointed to J.D. Martinez, whose five-year, $110-million contract with the Red Sox was one of those rare contracts in baseball that works out perfectly. Martinez won a World Series and was a top-10 hitter in the game during those five years. He was paid handsomely to do it. Win-win.
Not two weeks later, the guy who signed Martinez, Dave Dombrowski, was spraying champagne and celebrating in flip-flops as his Philadelphia Phillies advanced through the Atlanta Braves to move on to the National League Championship Series.
Dombrowski has made some stellar moves since taking over the Phillies in the winter of 2020, a year after he was fired from the Red Sox due to a difference in opinion of the direction the franchise needed to take.
And as the Phillies prepare for a trip to the World Series, Dombrowski is reshaping his legacy and erasing the stigma that long has followed him.
No, he’s not just the general manager (or, as they’re known in modern times, president of baseball operations) who trades prospects and spends money to buy championships.
He’s one of five GMs in history to be the architect of a World Series winning team for two different franchises, and he could soon have a third on his resume.
This one is different.
Dombrowski inherited a Phillies team that spent at least $140 million five times in nine seasons but hadn’t made the playoffs in any of those years. The prospect pipeline was ranked 26th and described by Baseball America as “one of MLB’s shallowest and worst farm systems.”
This wasn’t a classic Dombrowski turnaround job. This required more tact.
When he joined the Red Sox in 2015, it was a much different situation. The farm system was loaded. He had to deal with the Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval contracts, but was also free to spend. It was a team that needed an overhaul.
This Phillies team needed a slight reboot. It needed minor adjustments. It needed careful and nuanced change that could reshape the culture.
Dombrowski did all that, renovating the front office, changing the minor league development system and, this June, firing manager Joe Girardi after 22-29 start and replacing him with 59-year-old baseball lifer, Rob Thomson, who had never before managed.
“That was the first time I really made a lot of changes to an organization in, I don’t know, years,” Dombrowski told the Philadelphia Inquirer this week. “Maybe ever, really.”
He also rebuilt the roster in classic Dombrowski fashion, pushing the Phillies over the luxury tax threshold for the first time while signing Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos, a pair of middle-of-the-order sluggers, to massive contracts. He fortified the bullpen with sneaky-good acquisitions in Jose Alvarado and Seranthony Dominguez. And at the trade deadline, he landed David Robertson from the Cubs and Brandon Marsh and Noah Syndergaard from the Angels.
The Phillies are playing inspired baseball and they’re doing it with an organization that Dombrowski tore apart and rebuilt in a matter of two years.
In doing so, he may have forever changed his reputation.
This wasn’t like what he did in Boston, when he shipped out prospects and cash to add top-end talent that put them over the top in 2018. This was different. And it’s easy now to wonder if he would’ve done the same thing had John Henry kept him at the helm in 2019 and let Dombrowski re-sign Mookie Betts to push the Sox into the future.
The Nathan Eovaldi contract that once looked suspicious ended up working out just fine. The Martinez contract was an excellent one. Hiring Alex Cora as the manager turned out to be a brilliant move. The Bogaerts contract was a steal. David Price was an overpay, but he won them a World Series in 2018 at least. The only lingering stain is the Chris Sale contract, which has looked terrible not because of poor performance, but because of Sale’s string of bizarre injuries that have kept him off the field.
What would Dombrowski had done if he stayed in Boston? Re-sign Betts is the easy answer. And build around him.
He built around Bryce Harper and Aaron Nola in Philly and it’s working splendidly.
”We absolutely love Dave, just the way he acts and the way he is around us,” Harper told the Inquirer. “This is kind of his baby now. This is kind of his team that he’s put forward. He’s made moves with staff, minor league stuff. I think we’re kind of reaping the benefits of that right now.”
