Dave Dombrowski came out of left field on Thursday with a steaming hot take, saying the Red Sox do not have a lot of needs. You would think a team with no clear weaknesses would not be 10 games back of first place and a game out of a Wild Card spot. Dombrowski cited the offense to back his claim – the full quote was “There’s not a lot of needs, per se, that we have with the club, because we are leading the league in runs scored. You can always get better.”
Now Dombrowski cited how strong the offense was right off the bat, which made little sense because nobody is asking for another bat. The offense just scored 19 runs in one game off the best team in baseball. My favorite part of the quote was the curveball he tossed in at the end, saying we can always get better. Hey Dave you know what might help with that? How about we go get ourselves a closer since the Red Sox have 18 blown saves, tied for second behind the Mets and Nationals. The bullpen has a combined 4.59 ERA, 18th in the MLB. Improving in that area should be labeled as a need, especially considering how bad the starters have been.
The Red Sox starters have a combined 4.71 ERA, 18th in the MLB. I understand that Dave already acquired a fifth starter, but Cashner has done nothing but prove that he is not going to turn this team around. Dombrowski did comment on the starters saying: “We’ve got five starters going out there, they can always do better.” His attitude was basically “Hey what do you want from me? I got all five spots in the rotation filled with people.” That said, there is nothing he can really do at this point.
Trading for someone like Stroman and moving Cashner to the bullpen would be great but the farm system is so depleted that we could not pull off anything close to that magnitude. It is unfortunate that we do not have top prospects to deal or to contribute, but Dombrowski did what he had to do in