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Boston Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski joined Dale and Keefe on Thursday to talk about the trade deadline coming and going without making a deadline day deal.
Rich Keefe alluded to Dombrowski’s Tuesday press conference quote that if the team had been closer to first place in the AL East, he may have been more open to making a deal, asking if that meant he didn't believe in this team given where they are in the standings.
“I don’t think that’s fair at all,” said Dombrowski. “I think we’re in a position where you have to be realistic what your situation is. We’re really playing for… We want to win our division. It’s still possible.”
Dombrowski made it clear he knows they’re not in a favorable spot but things can change and fans shouldn’t give up on this team just yet, because he hasn’t.
“You wouldn’t bet those odds when you’re 10 games behind at this time of year but it has happened,” he added.
The GM spoke a lot about the "price of acquisition" or "acquisition cost" in terms of making a major deal before the deadline. In order to get a major piece for the bullpen, they would have had to give up something valuable and Dombrowski is confident in both the team and the farm system to improve without making major sacrifices. He rebutted that a better bullpen doesn’t necessarily have to come externally.
“If you tell me that we’re in a position where we have a 40-save definitive guy that was on our club and it fit in, of course that would make you better,” said Dombrowski. "If you had Mariano Rivera on your club you’d be a better club, but those guys aren’t that available all the time.
“We do like some of our guys in the back end of the bullpen. Guys like (Brandon) Workman and (Matt) Barnes who have been with us all season have pitched extremely well for us.”
Workman and Barnes have a combined nine saves and 11 wins on the season with 2.08 and 4.01 ERAs respectively.
Dombrowski talked about the importance of making a logical decision while weighing his options at this point in the season. With the situation in Boston right now, he wouldn’t trade a premium prospect who is relatively close to the big leagues for someone they might have for only two months.
“Last year we made some acquisitions and we made a decision to go over the CBT (competitive balance tax), the highest level of the CBT, and even forfeit 10 picks in the draft and be in a position where we picked up some additional finances to go above the largest penalty,” explained Dombrowski.
Boston paid the price of signing J.D. Martinez in February 2018. The tax limit was set at $197 million in 2018 and their payroll reached $239.5 million. Consequentially, the Red Sox had to pay $11,951,091 for exceeding the league’s tax threshold, but won the World Series eight months later so clearly it was worth it.
Major League clubs do have the ability to go beyond their payroll threshold, but will be subject to the CBT, commonly referred to as the luxury tax. The organization is taxed on each dollar they go over the payroll threshold settled on by the collective bargaining agreement.
“You prefer never to do that if your choice would be because you don’t want to lose the draft choices, you don’t want to pay the extra financial penalties, but we were very open-minded to doing that,” Dombrowski said.
He was adamant that the Red Sox organization has been tremendous providing those assets to help put the team in the best possible situation, and that finances wouldn't have prevented a deadline deal. Essentially, Dombrowski said not making a deal was simply about there not being one out there that he thought was worth pulling the trigger on.