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Mazz: Is Dave Dombrowski Capable Of Best Building Red Sox For Future?

BOSTON (CBS) -- So this week got me thinking: is Dave Dombrowski as good as we all think he is? And please don't manipulate the question. Dombrowski is an accomplished baseball executive. The question is whether the perception and the reality align.

And I'm not sure they do.

Here's the point: Dombrowski has been a chief executive in baseball now for almost 30 years. (His career as a team builder began in 1988 with the Montreal Expos.) He has won one World Series, the result of a spending binge by the 1997 Florida Marlins. Florida subsequently dismantled that team and, five years later, Dombrowski went to the Detroit Tigers. Florida subsequently won again in 2003, but it's hard to give that title to Dombrowski alone. Many of the players on that Florida team were acquired by Dombrowski. Many were not.

As for the Tigers, they went to the World Series twice during Dombrowski's tenure … and lost both. They went 1-8 in World Series play, getting swept by the San Francisco Giants in 2012 and losing in five games to an inferior St. Louis Cardinals team in 2006. Add in the Tigers' loss to the Red Sox in the 2013 American League Championship Series, and you could argue that two of the biggest postseason failures in baseball during this millennium were teams constructed by Dombrowski -- the '06 Tigers and the '13 edition.

Is that just bad luck? Maybe. But slightly more than one year into Dombrowski's career as president of the Boston baseball operation – particularly now that Mike Hazen has left the organization and Dombrowski takes greater hold of the reins – it's fair to wonder if Dombrowski builds good organizations or buys them. And the two are very, very different.

If you're so inspired, go back and take a good look at Dombrowski's draft history. The obvious names that stick out are Josh Beckett and Justin Verlander, two power right-handers who were both selected with the No. 2 overall pick in the draft. It certainly doesn't feel as if Dombrowski built the Marlins and Tigers with late and supplemental first-round picks the way Theo Epstein built, say, the 2007 Red Sox, particularly when many of his greatest acquisitions beyond the draft were via free agency in the international or big league marketplace.

Trades? Different Story. Dombrowski has made some gems. He acquired A.J. Burnett from the New York Mets and added him to the Marlins' pitching stable. He plucked Max Scherzer from the Arizona Diamondbacks in a deal that sent Curtis Granderson (another Dombrowski draft pick) to the New York Yankees. Most notably, he sent a cast of players to the Marlins for Miguel Cabrera, a player Florida signed in the international marketplace when Dombrowski was their chief executive.

But again: Cabrera was first a money signing, then already established as a great talent when Dombrowski acquired him again. The ultimate question here is whether Dombrowski can truly see young talent when nobody else does or whether he just buys it after development with someone else's money and/or prospects.

Again, don't misunderstand. Trades are a great way to acquire talent. But some of this relates to Dombrowski's true abilities as an evaluator, particularly after Hazen became the latest new-age executive to leave the Boston organization.

Remember: when the Red Sox were at their very best under Epstein, they were a blend of draft-and-player development and free agency. That is essentially what they were in 2016, too. As one big league executive recently put it, Dombrowski essentially gave up the Tigers farm system (generally ranked in the bottom 10 in baseball over the last five years) for the Boston farm system (generally one of the top 10) when he came to the Red Sox after being fired by Detroit. He bought David Price. He traded someone else's prospects for Craig Kimbrel, Brad Ziegler, Drew Pomeranz and Aaron Hill.

Over the next one or two offseasons, the Red Sox are going to be at a critical stage. As always, they have some money to spend. They also have some young, talented players in line for big contracts. The best way to manage it all is to continue drafting and developing players so that Dombrowski has all options available to him, something that doesn't feel like Dombrowski's strength as the Red Sox front office evolves from pre-Dombrowski to post-Dombrowski.

In Detroit, after all, the Tigers are now talking about deconstruction and an emphasis on youth because their farm system was too neglected for too long.

In five years, are we going to be saying the same about Dombrowski and the Red Sox?

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