Pretty Much Every Player That Dave Dombrowski Has Acquired Has Gotten Hurt At Some Point, But How Much Of That Is His Fault?
Before we dig in here, let me just say that I’m still a believer in Dave Dombrowski.
The headline for this blog is both true and incredibly alarming, but he hasn’t lost me yet. It’s an odd dynamic, because Boston is a market that is very quick to react, and a negative first impression has often negated any positive contributions that have come after. With Dombrowski, though, I think fans are smart enough to realize that he can only be blamed for so much. That, and he’s delivered at times when he said he was going to deliver. Every offseason, he makes his shopping list very well known, and checks off each item in impressive fashion.
The most recent “blemish”, if we can even call it that, on Dombrowski’s Red Sox tenure would be trading Travis Shaw, Mauricio Dubon and Josh Pennington for Tyler Thornburg, who we just learned will likely start the season on the disabled list before ever throwing a pitch for the Red Sox in a regular season game. Thornburg appeared in just two games this spring, allowed 7 earned runs on 7 hits in 1.1 innings, which led to him being shut down.
Thornburg didn’t make his most recently scheduled spring training appearance due to “upper right trapezius spasms”, which has brought upon the belief that he’ll start the season on the disabled list. Dombrowski doesn’t seem to be worried about the timetable on a Thornburg return, which sort of makes me roll my eyes given the team’s history of poorly forecasting injury timetables, but that’s where we’re at on Thornburg.
Another year, another broken setup man. This, of course, is in reference to Carson Smith, who the Red Sox acquired after sending Wade Miley to Seattle prior to the 2016 season. Smith suffered a forearm injury during spring last year, was able to avoid surgery before the season, made three appearances in May, and then off he went to undergo Tommy John surgery. Haven’t seen him since, and we won’t until about June of this year. He did, however, throw a bullpen last week that went really well. Despite the good news, the plan is still to have him return some time in June, burning a year and a half of his service time.
Speaking of Carson Smith, he’s the reason why I’m still bugging out about David Price. I got chirped for still being worried about Price, even though he was told by two of the best orthopedic surgeons in the world that he doesn’t need surgery or an elbow injection, but yeah. That’s what we were told about Smith, and then he needed the surgery anyway. I’m not a doctor; I’m just a guy who pays attention. No surgery now does not mean no surgery later. And we’re, what, four weeks removed from the original injury? What progress has he honestly made from rest and rehab?
He still hasn’t thrown off a mound since originally suffering the injury, and mid-May went from being the best case scenario for a return to, how can we even have an estimate on a return when we’re still in wait and see mode? This detail was swept under the rug a little bit, but Price said publicly that he was told if he were 22 or 23 that the recommendation would’ve been surgery. Are we just delaying the inevitable here? It seems that way, right? We’re just gonna ride Price until the wheels fall off? What if the UCL was torn last year and that was the reason for the drop in velocity and overall performance? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just get the surgery now so that his younger years in the seven-year pact aren’t wasted?
With Price out of the rotation to start the year, the Red Sox will have to depend on other arms to pull their weight. Arms like, say, Drew Pomeranz. You remember him, right? The guy that Dombrowski traded the Red Sox top pitching prospect in order to acquire last summer, but then there was some fuckery with medical records on the Padres side of things, shady actions that resulted in San Diego’s general manager AJ Preller getting a 30-day suspension for withholding medical information. The Red Sox had the chance to rescind that trade multiple times, and chose not to. Pomeranz, instead, remained Boston property, received a stem cell injection in his elbow at the end of the season, and also had a tricep injury this spring.
Then you have guys like Craig Kimbrel, who suffered a knee injury last year that required surgery, a quad injury to Chris Young last year that landed him on the disabled list for two months, and Roenis Elias, who came over in the Smith deal, was helped off the field a couple weeks ago with an injury.
It seems to me like the only player that Dombrowski has acquired that hasn’t suffered an injury has been Chris Sale (knock on fucking wood). Now, after all that, how many of these can you actually blame Dombrowski for? Seems like most of them have just been shit luck. Price had no injury history whatsoever and was the best available starting pitcher on the free agent market when the Red Sox were in desperate need of an ace, so that one was more than justifiable. Kimbrel was a freak accident, Young was a common in-game injury, and Thornburg we can even excuse as a fairly common injury, too. It’s also nothing serious. The timing of it is what sucks.
Smith, I think Dombrowski deserves partial blame. I think the Mariners knew something and weren’t upfront about it, and there were warning signs even without knowing that information. He had a dip in velocity at the end of 2015, and his unorthodox delivery looked like Tommy John waiting to happen. I think Dombrowski rolled the dice on that one, and took the L, at least for now. Smith isn’t a free agent until 2021, so there’s still plenty of time for a return on investment to be had in that deal.
I one thousand percent blame Dombrowski and the Red Sox for the Pomeranz trade. After the Steven Wright injury last summer, yes, they needed a starter. But the red flags were all over the place on Pomeranz. Plus, there had to be a way to reverse the trade, keep Anderson Espinoza, and maybe trade a prospect of lesser value if they really wanted Pomeranz. If you keep Espinoza, he’s more than likely the piece that gets sent to Chicago for Sale, and maybe you still have Michael Kopech right now, who has been blowing major leaguers away this spring with 102 MPH smoke.
When you lay it all out like this, it’s kind of wild to realize that pretty much every guy Dombrowski has acquired has gotten hurt at some point. Like I said, there’s a lot of shit luck involved here. That doesn’t get him off the hook for all of it, though. But how can I be mad when the Red Sox needed an ace, he went out and got one of the best left-handed pitchers in the game? And when they needed a closer, he went out and got the dude with the most saves in baseball since 2010. And when his ace wasn’t enough, he went out and got another ace. And when they needed a setup guy, he got five years of control of one of the best young relievers in the game. And when that reliever went down, he went out and got three years of control of yet another young, dominant reliever.
I still believe in Dombrowski. I don’t even wanna say that it’s against my better judgement, either, because it’s not even like that. This isn’t blind faith. I can see the logic in pretty much all of these deals, except for not reversing the Pomeranz trade. But if this trend continues, Red Sox fans are going to become less and less forgiving with each injury.