The highlights on Ben Cherington’s four-season resume as general manager of the Boston Red Sox were as enviable as anyone’s.
He won a World Series in 2013, groomed a core of standout young regulars who now grace the line-up and stocked a farm system that ranks among the best in baseball.
Unfortunately for him, those unsightly last-place finishes in 2012 and 2014, and the one they are working on this season, don’t look so good. In Boston, they expect a decent team playing meaningful games in September every year. Three boring summers out of four doesn’t cut it.
This week, the Red Sox hired Dave Dombrowski – the former Detroit Tigers executive who was fired just two weeks ago – as president of baseball operations in place of Cherington, who decided to resign when the transition is complete.
Cherington’s 2015 follies were painfully predictable. Red Sox fans watched with disbelief over the winter as he filled the starting staff with back-of-the-rotation pitchers. What? How does that work? It was stunningly myopic.
Dombrowski, 59, who built winning teams in Montreal, Florida and Detroit, was being courted by several teams. Boston is lucky to get him. Dombrowski, in turn, is lucky to land in deep-pocketed Boston with Cherington’s large stable of prospects at his disposal.
It really should be difficult to blow the opportunity, but we will give Dombrowski a hint, anyway: Dave, get some decent pitchers.
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