NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- The Red Sox are coming off a 94-win season and a division title.
MORE ON THE TRADE
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- Ortiz: My boy Sale to Boston? You guys got me thinking . . .
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- DJ Bean: Farewell to the prospects who were traded away
- Players and analysts react to the news
- Nightengale: Red Sox now prohibitive favorite in A.L.
Their starting rotation is solid, if not without some question marks. The team's core of young position players is the envy of the industry.
So, why, then, did Dave Dombrowski make the kind of gamble he did when he shipped arguably the best prospect in baseball and the organization's top pitching prospect to land White Sox lefthander Chris Sale?
"I think it's a situation where when you have a chance to win,'' explained Dombrowski, "you want to give yourself every opportunity to do so, if you can improve your club. And for us, this deal improved us.
"I'm not sure, for instance, if we didn't get (Drew) Pomeranz that we would have won our division. But any time you get there, short of just a total giveaway of your system or making moves that don't make us smart, I think you go for it.''
Dombrowski noted that most of his acquisitions -- Sale, Pomeranz, David Price, Craig Kimbrel -- are under the team's control for another three years.
"In baseball,'' he said, "four years down the road is an eternity in many ways. So you need to take advantage of that opportunity. Nothing's guaranteed in life; if you make these moves, it doesn't guarantee that you're going to win.
"But I think you just keep taking a chance. You keep going for it as much as you possibly can and hopefully, it works for you someday.''
The moves he's made to date, said Dombrowski, have all made the Red Sox "a little better.''
He further noted that with a young core of everyday players and prospects such as Rafael Devers and Sam Travis, "I think we're still strong for many, many years.''