PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) -- The Phillies have hired Dave Dombrowski, late of the Boston Red Sox, as their first president of baseball operations.
Dombrowski, 64, is a well-established front office executive and has been in baseball for decades. Phillies owner John Middleton on Friday called him "one of the most accomplished executives this great game has ever seen."
His Miami Marlins won a World Series in 1997. His Red Sox won in 2018. He was with the Detroit Tigers when they made the World Series in 2006 and 2012. He’s known for big, splashy free-agent signings and trades.
Andy MacPhail is the Phillies' current president and has planned to retire after the 2021 season. He said in October he would be willing to step aside sooner to make way for a new baseball operations boss.
USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported Dombrowski will receive a four-year, $20 million contract
"Between David and Joe Girardi, we now have two of the best people in place to set us on the path back to where we want to be, and that is the postseason and contending for world championships," Middleton said.
Understandably, before the Phillies confirmed the move, there was some mixed reaction.
"This is an upgrade over (current President Andy) MacPhail and (former General Manager Matt) Klentak. And that’s not saying a lot, but it’s an upgrade," Jon Marks on the SportsRadio 94WIP afternoon show said.
The Phillies reassigned Klentak within the organization after finishing 28-32 last season.
"It’s like going from 0 to 100," Howard Eskin said on WIP's "The Joe Giglio Show."
He said it's also an improvement for the front office, because he says Dombrowski doesn’t rely on analytics.
"He’s not gonna base everything on numbers, on a computer, and that’s a good thing," he said.
Then there are fans like James Seltzer, from WIP’s "High Hopes" podcast, who’s really upset because he believes expensive, win-now moves are wrong for a team not close to a title.
"It’s the most uninspired hire, and we talked about it. We even said, 'Of all the names out there, like, just not this one. Just not this guy!'" Seltzer said.
"All he does is he comes in and he burns everything to the ground and doesn’t care about the long term interest of the franchise. It’s just stupid."
Dombrowski is known for spending a lot of money. One open question is how much he will be able to spend right away because of the revenue the team has lost during the coronavirus pandemic.
Phillies owner John Middleton has spent aggressively in recent seasons, most notably signing slugger Bryce Harper to a $330 million, 13-year deal in 2019. The team has millions more tied up in deals for Zack Wheeler, Andrew McCutchen, Jean Segura and Aaron Nola.
A person familiar with the Phillies’ finances told the AP last week the club lost $145 million during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season played without fans. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the team hadn’t officially released the figures.
Dombrowski was the youngest general manager in baseball history when he took over the Montreal Expos in 1988 at 31 years old, and he played a major role in putting the small-market club on a path to contention with its fruitful farm system.
He joined the expansion Florida Marlins in 1991, two years before their first game, and was the chief architect of their 1997 World Series championship. Then he oversaw an ownership-mandated fire sale, helping to ultimately rebuild a Marlins squad that won another title in 2003, although Dombrowski had left for Detroit by then.
Dombrowski turned a Tigers team that lost an American League-record 119 games in 2003 into a perennial winner. Detroit won four straight division titles from 2011-14 and AL pennants in 2006 and 2012 before cutting him loose after the 2015 season.
He joined the Red Sox as president of baseball operations the following August and made a number of key acquisitions — including ace Chris Sale, slugger J.D. Martinez and manager Alex Cora — that led to Boston's 2018 World Series championship.
Dombrowski was fired by the Red Sox in September 2019 amid a disappointing follow-up to the championship run.