It was Tuesday, Sept. 1, when they all filed into the Fenway Park baseball conference room: pro scouts, amateur scouts, administrators—all for one of those change-of-command meetings that can lead to sleepless nights and bottles of Tums.
Dave Dombrowski, hired a mere two weeks earlier as Boston’s incoming president of baseball operations, walked in to conduct the meeting and, as he did, carried with him a couple of the thickest notebook binders that maybe had ever been seen in Fenway.
The reams of information and notes contained within did not lead directly to the landing of ace free agent David Price for an astounding $217 million over seven years.
They did not yet trace directly to San Diego and the acquisition of All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel.
But inside those binders were the organized thoughts and keys that would help produce the highly systematic and productive winter that the Red Sox are confident will put them back in contention, and soon.
Inside that room, Eddie Bane, a former big league pitcher-turned-super scout, and currently a Boston special assistant for player personnel, couldn’t help but smile.
“I had told the guys about his thoroughness,” said Bane, who was rescued by Dombrowski in Detroit after the Angels unceremoniously fired him as their farm director in 2010 despite the fact that he was the point man for drafting Mike Trout.
Bane worked for the Tigers under Dombrowski in 2011 before moving to the Red Sox in 2012. In the uncertain days following Boston’s bombshell, in-season hiring of Dombrowski on Aug. 18, not surprisingly, Bane fielded many inquiries from his Boston colleagues: What, exactly, are we getting into with this new guy?
“The Red Sox are world-famous for all of their computer stuff, and David walked into that first meeting, like I knew he would, with these unbelievably thick binder notebooks that carry all the information in the world,” Bane continued. “He is unbelievably comfortable in front of a computer, but Dave likes his information written in front of him, the written word.
“Our guys have never seen books that thick in their lives.”
As an organization, the Red Sox had plenty of work to do. They were headed for a second consecutive last-place finish in 2015 for the first time since baseball instituted divisional play in 1969. Worse, wrapped around that 2013 World Series title, Boston was on its way to finishing last in the AL East for a third time in four years.
Considered one of the finest executives of this generation, Dombrowski had been fired by Detroit Tigers owner Mike Ilitch just two weeks earlier, on Aug. 4. Immediately, several teams, including Toronto and Seattle, reached out regarding the possibility of hiring him.
With a clear sense now that things were moving quickly, and with his wife Karie, daughter Darbi and son Landon out of town visiting Karie’s side of the family in Oklahoma, Dombrowski had time alone the weekend of Aug. 14-16 to figure some things out. He sat down with a couple of long sheets of notes and jotted down some of his thoughts.
All things considered, from Dombrowski’s perspective, the Boston fit was the best. Like Detroit, the Red Sox have a century’s worth of rich history behind them. Lots of talent already was in place. And he had worked closely with John Henry, Boston’s principal owner, when Henry owned the Florida Marlins and Dombrowski was the general manager.
He now knew two things: He wanted to get back to work immediately. And he felt that doing it during the season, rather than waiting to start a new job after the season, would be advantageous.
He reached a deal with the Red Sox on Aug. 18 and went right to work.
“It was very helpful,” Dombrowski told Bleacher Report this week. “It gave me the chance to get a firsthand impression, get to know the club myself and also get to know people in the office before you have to move forward into the winter when the bulk of our work is done.
“It gave me a chance to get to know them and get to know their responsibilities. I don’t think it would have been possible to come in during the winter, not knowing the club, trying to ask intelligent questions, taking the pulse and learning things, like which scouts are high evaluators and low evaluators.
“That six- or seven-week period was extremely important.”
He immediately scheduled meetings with some baseball operations folks who were based in Boston during his first week on the job. After starting on Tuesday, Sept. 1, he sat down with then-GM Ben Cherington for probably a total of six hours over two days, that Thursday and Friday.
Dombrowski appreciated Cherington’s willingness to share his thoughts and opinions on a variety of organizational issues. But he failed to convince Cherington to stay, given that the final say on baseball matters would become Dombrowski’s.
“He gathered information from us at a very early stage right when he took the job,” Mike Hazen, whom Dombrowski promoted to GM from assistant GM, told B/R last week in Nashville, Tennessee, at the winter meetings. “Where are the limitations on the roster? Where do we need to fix? Where do we need to improve? How do you guys see the team?
“He talked to a number of people, I’m sure, externally as well. And then he formulated that plan and we tried to execute it as best we could.”
Most of Dombrowski’s key advisers had remained in Detroit. Al Avila, his right-hand man for years, was named by Ilitch to replace him with the Tigers. Other key Dombrowski lieutenants such as Scott Reid, David Chadd and Scott Bream stayed with Avila and the Tigers, too.
In Boston, Dombrowski hired only one new special assistant, Frank Wren, the former Atlanta Braves GM. The two worked together in the Marlins’ organization nearly two decades ago.
Right away, he met with Hazen and Brian O’Halloran, another assistant GM who, among other things, specializes in rules.
“Just to get his bearings,” Hazen said. “Because we were in the middle of the season. Roster situations, this is what we have. I think we had someone on release waivers at the time.
“It was, ‘Hey, get me up to speed on where we’re at. What do we need to get done? Don’t let me miss anything.’ And that’s fair, because things already were in place in a lot of cases. We were playing games. Do we have any impending roster situations? Is anyone hurt? The tactical day-to-day stuff.
“After a few days, he met with the entire front office, explaining, ‘This is who I am, this is my plan, this is what I want to execute. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you guys. I don’t know a lot of you. I know some of you.’
“From that point forward, it was just sort of get back to work. It was great. I think he put everybody at ease very quickly.”
Through the day-to-day details, relationships were formed and then strengthened. As small tasks got done, they moved on to the bigger stuff.
“Over time it became, ‘Look, I’m going to hire a GM; you’re a candidate to do that, you’re auditioning, you’ve been interviewing for me for weeks now. Keep doing that and we’ll sit down and talk and have an interview at some point once I’m ready to tackle that position,'” said Hazen, who formally was named as GM on Sept. 24.
Once the season ended, Dombrowski summoned all of the Boston pro scouts for a second meeting, this one in Phoenix during the Arizona Fall League season, the weekend of Oct. 23-25. With the World Series now underway, free agency was coming quickly. It was time to set a final winter strategy blueprint and start to move.
“Just like David did in Detroit, we got together at the end of the year and you talk about next year and the future,” Bane said. “Same thing, I’m sure, as when he worked with Roland Hemond [the legendary former executive who was honored by the Hall of Fame in 2011] when he was with the White Sox.
“Being so organized, it makes your job easier and others feel appreciated.”
By that point, the Red Sox, of course, had done extensive work on Price. Obviously, Dombrowski knew the pitcher well from their time together in Detroit. Bane scouted “probably four of David’s last five starts.”
“As far as the contract, I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Bane said, chuckling. “I know it looked like it was sudden, but it was anything but.
“We were planning on having an ace. We didn’t have an ace before.”
By the time those meetings in Arizona were finished, the Red Sox’s winter plans called for more than just an ace.
“Really, that starts at the end of the season when you meet with your major league staff,” said Dombrowski, who retained manager John Farrell, bench coach Torey Lovullo, hitting coach Chili Davis and pitching coach Carl Willis, among others. “I knew some of the people, not as well as in the past like, say, Jim Leyland, whom I had worked with for a few years.”
But based on internal meetings with the staff, and others, the winter goals and needs came into sharp focus:
• Top-of-the-rotation starter.
• Someone who could step up and close immediately, given that Koji Uehara will be 41 when the 2016 season starts.
• A fourth outfielder.
• A beefed-up bullpen, given the workload setup man Junichi Tazawa has carried for the past three seasons (190 total innings).
“You have some thought processes, and you really know what your needs are at the end of the season. You can identify those,” Dombrowski said. “You crystallize your rankings—who you like, who you want to pursue. That’s done in Arizona, when you get everyone together.
“Then, you sit down with the owner and you move forward. If you’re ready to go, you may as well go ahead and do it. Things fell together very quickly.”
On Friday, Nov. 13, just three weeks after the Red Sox’s AFL meetings, they acquired their closer, Kimbrel, by sending four minor league prospects to San Diego.
On Monday, Nov. 30, the Red Sox agreed to terms with outfielder Chris Young on a two-year, $13 million deal.
The Price mega-deal dropped two days later, when the left-hander agreed to the seven-year contract with an average annual value of $31 million.
Then, in a winter meetings swap in Nashville on Dec. 7, the Red Sox sent excess starter Wade Miley and a prospect to Seattle for starting pitcher Roenis Elias and young setup man Carson Smith.
Bingo. Over an adrenaline-filled 25-day span, the Red Sox had checked off all four items from their winter wish list:
• Kimbrel is perhaps the game’s best closer.
• Smith is the setup man who they hope will help pull things together in the bullpen.
• Young is the veteran outfielder who should add depth behind Rusney Castillo (the intriguing Cuban import in left field), Jackie Bradley Jr. in center and Mookie Betts in right.
• And Price is the centerpiece as the Red Sox look to put two lost years behind them and swing for the fences again.
“One thing is, he’s very direct and honest,” Hazen said. “It’s not surprising, but everyone has a different style and different approaches. That’s been the one thing that stands out, and it reverberates through a number of people on our staff.
“Ben was one of my best friends and is a great guy, and honest, so they’re very similar in that way. Dave is just very direct in what he wants to do, whether it’s lining up going after acquisitions or identifying needs on the trade market or otherwise. It’s, ‘Hey, let’s do it, let’s get it done.’
“We haven’t gotten everything done we want to do, but in a lot of ways that course has been charted.”
And following that brief period of internal uncertainty in Fenway Park for those who wondered what their futures held under Dombrowski, it’s been full steam ahead.
“Joe Klein (a former major league executive) told me a long time ago, just remember there’s good people in every organization,” Bane said. “And when you think your team is the only team with good people, you’re going to get beat.
“It seems David goes by the same thing. He had great people in Detroit, people like David Chadd and Scott Bream and Scott Reid. But he also knew we had good people in Boston.”
Last week in Nashville was only the third time Boston’s entire baseball group gathered in one place, following that Sept. 1 meeting and the October get-together in Arizona. Hemond, now retired, visited the Red Sox suite to see Dombrowski and share memories.
This week, with most of the heavy lifting done for the winter, things finally are beginning to slow down.
“It’s not quite as hectic as it was before,” Dombrowski acknowledged. “But you’re always moving forward under any circumstances.
“We’re going to experience things together as an organization that will be new for us, doing things for the first time—how do you do this, how do you do that? Going to spring training. Opening talks, how do we handle them? Who wants to talk?”
Then, there will be the moving vans. The Dombrowskis already have purchased a home in Boston, but with his daughter in the middle of her senior year of high school in Michigan (his son is a sophomore), they will wait until June to move.
Though they have seen one another fairly frequently since dad set off to lead the Red Sox, two weeks at Christmas will be the longest the family has been together since mid-August. Dave is eager for the short break, and he knows one thing before he even sets foot back in the house: His son, Landon, who flew to Boston for the Price press conference, already has junked his Tigers gear.
“We’re all Red Sox,” Dave said, not missing a beat. “Through and through.”
Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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