What if the Red Sox went all-in? (tfka Dombrowskied)

How about Cherington’d: trade your best trade chips and take on bad contracts and fringe prospects? (Lackey/Lester) or miss out on a international free agent (Abreu) and overreact and sign a lemon (Rusney)

What would be the Dombrowskian logic for trading Devers? That would be like if the actual Dombrowski had traded Bogaerts in 2016. Instead he extended him.

For that matter, Dombrowski also held onto Devers himself, and in this analogy you'd figure to hold onto one of the current top prospects, either Mayer or Casas.

I also don't see why Oakland would be looking to add Devers two years away from free agency, and I don't think that would be enough to get Mullins.

Overall this turns the Sox' farm system into the worst in the majors, while making the team older and failing to land an ace starter.

This made me laugh, it was a sad laugh cause it’s true

I think he will do a lot better in Pittsburg where the pressure to win every year won't be there and he can just build build build build the farm system.  Some people are cut out for the major markets and others are cut out for the small markets.  Gotta give him credit for the farm system he had when he left or young players ready to step in and play but I wasn't a Cherington fan.

nevermind.  literary freedom is more important.

I agree that he’ll probably do better in Pittsburgh, but look at his 2012-2015 drafts. They were soooo bad, basically only Benintendi and Kopech. (Even traded Chavis back to him for a cherry on top). We didn’t get any good bench players out of those drafts either. Dombrowski miraculously turned Deven Marrero into Josh Taylor. Our second round picks were also terrible. I won’t even bring up the he who shall not be named 7th overall pick of the 2013 draft. Cherington would have fit better with the Mets or some other incompetent organization honestly 😂 

Yeah, Cherington has a reputation of a guy who puts the farm system first, but he hardly added any real prospects throughout his tenure - not just through the draft but even with the Lester and Lackey trades.

I think the Dombrowski thing is overplayed. He was more likely to give up quantity than quality in his trades of minor leaguers. In his time with the Sox he gave up one top notch prospect, Moncada, and that was in a deal for a young pitching ace in his prime on a steal of a locked in contract.

Is Manny Margot the second biggest prospect he gave up during his tenure with the Sox? If so, that's hardly giving up the next Jeff Bagwell. I did balk when he dealt Espinoza, but it turned out Espinoza would have worse injury issues than Pomeranz had so the deal didn't bite him.

What got Dombrowski in some trouble was trading too many players in a deal, those 4 for 1s with the exception of the Pomeranz/Espinoza deal. So he'd thin out the system with these deals, but it's not like these were irreplaceable talents. Another problem is that the Sox didn't do a great job of replacing these marginal talents in the system so the system suffered.

As you pointed out Dombrowski usually protected his top talent. I think he was pretty good at sorting out talent. He held onto Benintendi. He held onto Devers. I'm sure he could have dealt JBJ but he didn't.

Dombrowski might have offered Mookie the big bucks, who knows. He has a track record of huge extensions as Miguel Cabrera can testify to.

I think the point of the thread is: what if the Sox went all in - no holds barred? Which I think overinflates what Dombrowski did.

It can be an interesting thought exercise but we all know that Chaim Bloom shouldn't and wouldn't operate that way.

I think the San Diego Padres kind of tried to do that in 2021 and it didn't work out too well. A part of me will wonder how the Padres would have done had they left their system intact and let these guys develop (or not).

Either way, it sucks that there's nothing current in baseball to actually talk about unless we start some sort of prediction thread as to what Bloom will do when the lockout ends, what moves, but not even knowing what the luxury tax limit looks like, etc, that's even hard to do.

I don't want to enter the Great Dombrowski Debate yet again, but I do agree with this: 1) What would Dombrowski do if he were the current GM of the Red Sox, and 2) What would the Red Sox do if they went full go-for-it-now mode? are two different questions.

Yes he was. Frankly I was so hung up on remembering Moncada and not including Devers, I forgot all about Kopech. Still a worthwhile deal, though, even though I remembering thinking that the deal will bite the Red Sox at some point. I guess that point would be if Kopech develops into a top notch starter which he does have the ability to be if he's not a top notch closer.