Dave Dombrowski has never shied away from free agent splashes, but he’s really made his bones with trades. Now, with the GM Meetings on the horizon, it will be interesting to see how the new Red Sox president of baseball operations knows his new farm system, Brian MacPherson of The Providence Journal writes. Dombrowski has indicated that he might deal from the team’s organizational outfield depth, but deciding who to move and who to hold can be tricky. DD will have to evaluate outfielders from the majors like Mookie Betts and Jackie Bradley Jr. down to minor leaguers Manuel Margot and Andrew Benintendi.
Here’s more out of the AL East:
- When asked if he could eventually return to the Blue Jays as GM, Alex Anthopoulos told Jim Bowden and Jim Duquette of SiriusXM (via Twitter links) that there is “no chance.” When asked if he’d seek out another GM job, AA said, “Certainly not in the near term. Going forward, I would be open to it. I don’t know I need to do it again.” Anthopoulos also refuted reports that new Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro was critical of his summer trades. Shapiro himself shot those rumors down in a press conference last week.
- There’s a lot of pressure on Dombrowski to acquire an ace, but ultimately any big ticket move will be the call of Red Sox owner John Henry, Scott Lauber of the Boston Herald writes. It is well known that Henry is against long-term, high-priced deals for aging pitchers, but one industry insider speculates that he will defer to Dombrowski’s judgment “on one big fish” this winter. Last year, the Red Sox went into April without a true ace and while there were other factors holding them back, they wound up with a second consecutive last-place finish.
- Roch Kubatko of MASNsports.com looked at MLBTR’s projection of a six-year, $144MM deal for Orioles slugger Chris Davis and gave his own take.
I’m pretty sure that the majority of free agent pitchers, let alone most free agents, are in their age 29 or later season. Finding a player, regardless of position, in their ultimate prime through free agency is pretty rare considering they would have to be in the majors before 23. Two consecutive last place finishes should make Henry realize that if he doesn’t want to get rid of young pieces, he is going to need to gamble in free agency.
So if we run that through the Alex Anthopoulos filter, we can assume he will take a job, but in an unexpected role as pitching coach in Japan.
Listening to the AA interview on the MLB Network today, I really got the impression that he decided a long time ago (before Shapiro entered the mix) that he wasn’t going to return to the Blue Jays. He talked at some length about how it’s important to be a man of your word when you sign a contract, and not to quit. He also said that if he had a couple of years left on his contract when Shapiro came in, he would have stayed.
Frankly, this sounds like someone who wants to do something different with his life. Maybe he’ll work for MLB? Maybe a birdie in his ear is telling him there’s an opportunity to help bring baseball back to his hometown of Montreal? Only time will tell.
As much as I’m going to miss AA, I love the idea of him working to bring back the Expos.
As much as I’ll miss AA, I love the idea of him bring the Expos back.
The amount of trades and prospects moved at the trade deadline was a give away for sure, they were 8 games back of the Yankees at the time, with absolutely no guarantees of making anything.
Yankees were playing above their heads. It was pretty evident that with the addition of Price and Tulo to that prolific offence, they would have a very good chance of catching the bombers. Plus they were only a couple games out of a wild card berth. So there was a pretty good chance of ‘making anything’.