Leading up to last year's trade deadline, then-Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski alerted other clubs that he wasn’t sure whether Detroit would buy or sell. But as the Tigers played a day game in Tampa Bay in the last hours before the deadline, he reached out to interested teams and told them he was ready to move David Price and Yoenis Cespedes. After he finished big trades, executives from the Blue Jays, Mets and other teams remarked on what they saw as Dombrowski’s efficiency and decisiveness. He was fully prepared, they thought, and knew exactly what he wanted to do, and made significant deals very quickly in a business that increasingly is seemingly bogged down by the process of value extraction, and, by extension, the fear of mistakes.
It is within this context that rival officials are watching the Red Sox and Dombrowski, and assuming that in the next 33 days, he will execute a lightning strike for pitching -- and not for a journeyman, back-end-of-the-rotation type. One evaluator believes that inevitably, Dombrowski will target a much more exclusive group of pitchers: The young, powerful arms early in their respective careers. Dombrowski has been given carte blanche by Boston ownership to do what he needs to do to win now and has high-end prospects to deal, such as Yoan Moncada and Andrew Benintendi.
That high caliber of assets will give the Red Sox an opportunity to discuss players who might be off-limits to other teams, the evaluator said. "It's like the Red Sox will be able to buy from The Special Reserve," he joked, comparing Dombrowski to someone who is taken into an exclusive part of a wine cellar.
Who that might mean, exactly, remains to be seen. The Indians have a special collection of pitching, for sure, and have talked to other teams about their starters in the past -- but Cleveland has a good thing going, with a big lead in the American League Central and a winning streak that grows by the day. Rival executives continue to wonder if the White Sox will change their stance and market Chris Sale if they continue to drop in the standings. Julio Teheran has pitched well this season, although there are questions among some scouts about how his stuff would translate in the AL East. The Rays have a lot of good starting pitching, and as a small-market team, perhaps a greater willingness to discuss deals with division rivals.
But while it's unclear whom Dombrowski will pursue, exactly, some of his peers are confidently predicting he is going to do something, and it probably will have high impact.