While Dave Dombrowski's last couple of years with the Detroit Tigers haven't been his best, as he's made some questionable trades, he definitely left the Tigers on a good note getting some really good young talent in exchange for rentals. Dave knows Sox owner John Henry from his days with the Florida Marlins, and was responsible for building the 1997 World Champion Marlins. When he moved on to the Tigers, he engineered the trade for superstar Miguel Cabrera and built up a strong core through lots of other great trades. While his past couple of seasons have been a bit disappointing, the Tigers did make the playoffs last year and definitely underperformed this year (much of that due to injury). He left with the very capable assistant GM Al Avila taking over his old duties.

While Sam Kennedy is now team President of the Red Sox, he is only in charge of the business side of things. I like Dombrowski a lot, and if I were to pick anyone to fill the vacated position that Larry Lucchino recently left, he would be my first choice.  So I feel the Sox did the right thing here. Ben Cherington was not fired, and was in fact asked to stay on as general manager. But as he would be reporting directly to Dombrowski, he declined to remain; however, he will remain on-board as an assistant for the remainder of the season. It will be interesting to see who Dombrowski chooses as Cherington's successor in the off-season, or if he will assume the dual role of President of Baseball Operations and GM that he had in Detroit. As Dombrowski is assuming baseball operations duties effective immediately, it will be interesting to see if there are any August deals and how September call-ups will be handled under the new leadership.