If you looked at the big picture, it seemed inevitable that Dave Dombrowski wouldn't last much longer in Boston.
But why did the Red Sox fire their president of baseball operations so abruptly (and unceremoniously) late Sunday night?
The Athletic's Peter Gammons is one of the most plugged-in reporters in Boston, and he gave a pretty revealing account Monday on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" podcast of how things went down between Dombrowski and the Red Sox.
According to Gammons, who was at Fenway Park for Sunday night's Red Sox-Yankees game, Dombrowski usually walks down from his office to the Red Sox clubhouse at around 2:30 p.m. and stops to chat with reporters along his way.
But on Sunday, Gammons told host Buster Olney, Dombrowski, "kind of went barging by."
"He had something on his mind," Gammons said. "I was trying to figure out what in the world [was happening]. Did somebody get hurt or something? And then Rob Bradford from WEEI said to me, 'Gee, [Red Sox chairman] Tom Werner kind of seems like he's in a confused mode today.' "
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Gammons soon put the pieces together by relaying what he had heard from a team source.
"As someone who's very close to ownership said to me (Monday) morning, Dave was tired of hearing he's not coming back next year," Gammons said. "So, he pressed and said [to ownership], 'I want to know. I want clarity. I want an extension,' and was told no. And if he didn't like it, that was it. They were just going to part ways then."
The Athletic's Evan Drellich also reported Monday that Red Sox ownership turned down Dombrowski's extension requests. But Gammons suggested Dombrowski made a final push Sunday, and when ownership rebuffed him, he picked up and left in the middle of the game.
"I looked up at one point during the game in about the sixth inning to see what Dave's expression was, and the shock was, he wasn't in his box," Gammons said.
"So, he clearly had left before the end of the game. People say he was fired after the game. I think he knew before the game that that was going to be it, and he probably made up his mind that, 'I'm going to leave. Because I know I'm not coming back.'
That hasty exit may explain why Dombrowski didn't hold a press conference, instead making a brief statement to a small group of reporters.
Dombrowski built one of the best teams in Red Sox history that brought a World Series title to Boston in 2018. But things apparently went downhill in a hurry, to the point where the team's president of baseball operations left in a huff after getting the mid-season ax.
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