It was a cool fall evening on Oct. 28, 2018, in Los Angeles with temperatures in the high 50s. The Boston Red Sox had just completed one of the best runs in baseball history, winning 108 regular-season games and then beating three teams that had won 100 games in the playoffs - including a Dodgers team in their second consecutive World Series - to win the franchise’s ninth championship and fourth since 2004. The Red Sox had an elite mix of veterans and some of the best young players in the game. Seven years and one playoff appearance later it is all gone, a potential dynasty willfully dismantled.
To call the 2018 Red Sox an elite team would be an understatement. They won 108 games by bludgeoning opponents. The Red Sox led the majors in batting average, had 25 more runs than the team in second, led the majors in on base percentage and slugging percentage, and were third in stolen bases. Their pitching staff was eighth in ERA, eighth in opponent batting average, fourth in strikeouts and pitched 14 shutouts, which was sixth. In what may be the most shocking for fans of the current team, the Red Sox committed just the seventh-fewest fielding errors in 2018.
The team accomplishments are dazzling and the individual ones might be even more so. Boston had five All-Stars. A 25-year-old outfielder named Mookie Betts had an astonishing 10.7 WAR, won the MVP, Silver Slugger and Gold Glove. J.D. Martinez finished fourth in MVP voting and won a Silver Slugger with 43 home runs. Team leader Xander Bogaerts finished 13th in MVP voting. Jackie Bradley Jr. was one of the best defensive players in MLB and, despite a difficult season at the plate, hit a grand slam in the ALCS and won ALCS MVP. All-Star ace Chris Sale finished fourth in Cy Young voting with a 2.11 ERA. Twenty-five-year-old Eduardo Rodriguez won 13 games with a 3.82 ERA, and David Price finally broke free from his playoff struggles. The list could go on and on.
The architect of it all was Dave Dombrowski, the man who had taken a good farm system and group of young players and pulled off the trade for Sale, the signings of Price and Martinez, and the in-season trade for World Series MVP Steve Pearce. The 2018 Red Sox were not perfect, but they were about as close as you can get in Major League Baseball.
Dombrowski was fired on Sept. 9, 2019, less than one year removed from the celebration at Dodger Stadium. Since then, the Red Sox have willingly moved on from every player mentioned above. Some of the moves have made sense; many have not, unless saving money was the overriding goal.
Dombrowski has gone on to assemble one of the best teams in baseball in Philadelphia. Betts has won two World Series and finished top five in MVP voting twice since being traded to the Dodgers. Of the players the Red Sox received for the future Hall of Famer, only Connor Wong, a below average backup catcher, remains. Bogaerts was lowballed by the Red Sox years before free agency before eventually leaving to join the San Diego Padres. Though his Padres contract is an overpay and his production has been inconsistent, he has given San Diego more than his replacement, Trevor Story, has given the Red Sox.
Nate Eovaldi? He left the Red Sox in free agency in 2023 and promptly helped the Rangers win the World Series while being an All-Star. His current 2025 ERA is 1.56. Sale had an injury-riddled and frustrating tenure in Boston after 2018, but won the Cy Young in Atlanta in his first year there in 2024. The return for him, Vaughn Grissom, has not made an impact in the majors. Eduardo Rodriguez had two solid seasons on the Tigers pitching staff before battling injuries in Arizona last year. Andrew Benintendi was traded in 2021 and followed it with three strong seasons including an All-Star appearance in 2022. J.D. Martinez played in Boston until 2022 before leaving; he played two more seasons and made one more All-Star Game.
And, of course, Rafael Devers, who was only in his second season in 2018 and has had offensive numbers that compare favorably to multiple Hall of Famers, is now gone. Devers was never a leader and, from the outside looking in, a subpar teammate during his final months in Boston. Had the Red Sox kept Betts, signed Bogaerts early and retained at least one of Sale or Eovaldi, then Devers never would have come anywhere close to a leadership role and several of these problems might never have surfaced.
Going back through it all, it seems only one transaction has unequivocally worked out for the Red Sox: trading Christian Vasquez to the Astros for Wilyer Abreu.
You could make individual cases for several of these moves. Devers was unhappy. Bogaerts was likely to decline in the final couple seasons of a deal like Trevor Story’s. Sale had injury problems. But taken together, and added with the indefensible moves of trading Betts, letting Eovaldi and Rodriguez leave, and mismanaging the mercurial Devers, a pattern emerges.
Nothing is guaranteed in baseball, and winning the World Series is extremely difficult. No front office is going to get everything right. But at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 28, 2018, the Red Sox had all the necessary pieces of a team to win multiple championships. Instead, they have willfully dismantled it.