NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Tuesday was the day the Boston Red Sox won the 2017 American League East title, and that’s a pretty big deal – big enough to shove aside Joe Maddon, the manager of the World Series champion Chicago Cubs.
There was Maddon, sitting leisurely behind a table in the media workroom in a leather jacket and sneakers, discussing what mantra or motto he would need for the 2017 regular season after winning the team’s first World Series in 108 years and just like that up on the stage for a news conference came John Farrell and David Dombrowski.
Thunder stolen.
Title? Maybe not so much. Not yet, at least.
The Red Sox put the lie to the misguided notion that they were going to be off-season bystanders by flipping not just the winter meetings but the entire game of baseball upside down, landing Chris Sale from the Chicago White Sox for a package of prospects highlighted by 21-year-old Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada, considered the top prospect in the game.
It was a brazen hijacking. A game-changer that came out of the fog of a highly-publicized play for Sale by the Washington Nationals. And for Toronto Blue Jays fans, it’s starting to feel like old times again after back-to-back trips to the post-season.
There’s a whole lotta Steve Pearce going on, you know?
“I see Joe Maddon over there,” Dombrowski said, nodding towards the Cubs manager, who quietly vacated his table. “We’re all trying to get where he is.”
Dombrowski could have looked to his right and seen somebody who has been there: Farrell, the man who took the 2013 Red Sox to the World Series after an underwhelming off-season that saw the team add the likes of Shane Victorino, David Ross and Mike Napoli.
That team went into spring training that season highly unfancied. That won’t be the case this spring. The Red Sox traded away their top pitching prospect as well (hard-throwing Michael Kopech) as well as switch-hitting outfielder Luis Basabe and another power arm for the back end of the bullpen, Victor Diaz.
In two years, Dombrowski has moved six upper-tier prospects in two seasons, but Sale is this winter’s nuclear option: A 27-year-old five-time all-star left-hander with a career WHIP of 1.065 who has been very comfortable, in small sample sizes, pitching in AL East ballparks. He makes $38 million over the next three seasons ($38 million!) and effectively makes this season’s AL Cy Young Award winner, Rick Porcello, the Red Sox’s No. 3 starter. Sale, David Price, Porcello, Drew Pomeranz are the Sox’s top four and a fifth starter will come from all-star knuckleballer Steven Wright, 23-year-old lefty Eduardo Rodriguez or Clay Buchholz, the latter of whom is on a $13.5-million option.
Moving one to the bullpen might be intriguing but the Red Sox already have Craig Kimbrel as closer, should get a healthy Carson Smith back and – oh yeah – added setup man Tyler Thornburg in another deal on Tuesday. Thornburg had a 2.15 ERA in 67 games for the Milwaukee Brewers, striking out 90 in 67 innings.
So, let’s recalibrate: The team that won the AL East can run out 20-something-year-old homegrown position players such as Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley, Jr., Andrew Benintendi and Xander Bogaerts, has the bulk of the best starting rotation in baseball locked up for the next three years and has pieces to trade.
Yikes! Why play the season?
“Four years down the road is an eternity in many ways,” said Dombrowski, who graciously credited his predecessor Ben Cherington – now the Blue Jays vice-president of baseball operations – with drafting and signing all the prospects he’s unloaded. “So you need to take advantage of the opportunity. Nothing’s guaranteed in life, though. If you make these moves, it doesn’t mean you’ll win.
“But any time you get there, short of just a total giveaway of your system or making moves that aren’t smart … I think you go for it.”
Well of course you do. Look around the AL East: The Baltimore Orioles are still waiting for Zach Britton to come in from the Rogers Centre bullpen, the Blue Jays are dealing with the vagaries of one of the oldest rosters in the game and the loss of cornerstone position players, the New York Yankees are about a year or maybe two behind the Red Sox in a rebuild and the Tampa Bay Rays run of luck with starting pitching seems to have run out, exacerbating an always-present set of financial limitations.
In fact, it was Yankees GM Brian Cashman who waved a rhetorical white flag, calling the Red Sox the “Golden State Warriors of baseball,” which is a nicer sentiment than when former Red Sox president and chief executive officer Larry Lucchino called the Yankees the “Evil Empire.”
Boldness is in Dombrowski’s blood – always has been. This is the guy, remember, who was GM of the Montreal Expos and traded away a future Hall of Famer in Randy Johnson for Mark Langston.
So, where do we go from here Blue Jays fans? My guess is the wild-card standings will be a place to begin, and that reminding yourself on a daily basis that it’s the Cleveland Indians – not the Red Sox – who are the defending AL champions is another place to start. That and light a few of those candles you thought were no longer in vogue after the departure of R.A. Dickey.
Look, if you really want to worry, consider the White Sox, whose GM, Rick Hahn, seemed to suggest he will trade anybody who isn’t under control for three years. Think about that. This is a team that spent the past three seasons in go-for-it mode, over-paying for 30ish free agents. A team that was, in Hahn’s words, “aggressive when it came to patching holes.”
“This is a reset for us,” Hahn said matter-of-factly. “The path just doesn’t fit for how we acted the last couple of years. It was about ‘win now.’ It was ‘patch and play.’ We had to ask the question, ‘when is the right time to pivot?’”
You want something to worry about? Worry about that. Worry about the impact of time on an old lineup in a young man’s game, and when the call to pivot is heard.