New Red Sox President of Baseball Operations – Dave Dombrowski (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

The Red Sox stormed their way to a 9-1 victory over the Indians last night behind a relentless, 16 hit offensive attack and an outstanding outing by Eduardo Rodriguez. But that was overshadowed by the big news that broke late in the game: the Red Sox hired Dave Dombrowski as President of Baseball Operations, and Ben Cherington declined to stay on as the team’s general manager.

There’s a lot to digest here, but first and foremost, this was a smart baseball decision. Dave Dombrowski is a great executive and has proven his ability to build talented teams in Montreal, Florida, and Detroit. Better yet he did it through a healthy balance of drafting, trading, and free agent signings. He’s well respected and was very, very highly sought after once he parted ways with the Tigers. In his statement he said he made it clear to John Henry (who he worked for on the Marlins) and the rest of the Red Sox ownership that Boston was his first choice.

Of course, the flip side of this is the fact that Ben Cherington declined to stay on as GM and will be moving on when the season ends (he’s staying on until then to help Dombrowski with the transition). Cherington has been with the Red Sox his entire career — since 1999. He’s had a hand in all of the wonderful things we’ve enjoyed as Red Sox fans in that time period and was the chief architect of the 2013 World Series team.

I’m curious as to how this played out behind the scenes. Did Cherington feel forced out, or could he not reconcile the fact that he wouldn’t have the final say in baseball decisions? Many teams in baseball now have a president of baseball operations and a general manager, most notably the Cubs with former Red Sox executives Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer. If he felt forced out, it would be a bit of a raw deal for Cherington, who despite two consecutive last place finishes (maybe) I thought was doing a fine job. The farm system is as strong as ever and the contracts that didn’t work out in ’15 were very similar to the contracts that won the Sox a World Series in ’13. In any case Cherington will be missed, and you could tell some of the players were emotional in their postgame interviews, most notably Pedroia and Ortiz.

The Game:

Eduardo Rodriguez spun a real gem on Tuesday night. (Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

Rollercoaster Rodriguez was back on the bump, and true to form, followed up his most recent awful outing with his most recent spectacular outing.

I guess this up-and-down pattern is better than stringing multiple bad starts together, but I think everyone in the organization is looking for a little more consistency out of Eddie. Interestingly, his ERA is now 1.67 in night games and 10.67 in day games. Maybe Duardo isn’t a morning person.

The one run he surrendered was a longball by Michael Brantley. Home runs have been a problem for Rodriguez, he’s now given up 11 in 14 starts.

The offense, meanwhile, continued to be a well-oiled machine. They pounded out 9 runs on 16 hits.

The big blow came in the bottom of the second on a bit of a lucky break for the Red Sox. The bases were loaded with one out for Mookie Betts, who appeared to strike out on an 0-2 hook from Indians’ starter Trevor Bauer. As Betts was walking towards the dugout, the first base ump trotted in towards the plate, had a brief chat with the home plate ump, and they eventually ruled that Mookie had fouled it off. Replays showed pretty conclusively that Betts never made contact with the pitch – the ball didn’t appear to change direction or rotation after the swing.

In any case, Mookie climbed back in, Bauer tried two more curveballs, but after seeing that pitch three times in a row, Betts was ready for it and cleared the bases with a double. I can’t ever remember the first base umpire coming in out of his own volition to rule that a swing and miss had actually been fouled off at home plate, but I’ll take it.

Travis Shaw smacked four more hits and is now hitting .371. I’ve also decided that he swings like a righty; his swing looks like it’s dominated by his top hand.

Other offensive highlights:

• Brock Holt! was 3-5 with two RBIs.
• Papi was 2-4 with two doubles, a walk and an RBI.
• Sandoval was 2-5 with two singles, but both balls would have been doubles for virtually any other player on the team.
• Swihart was 2-3 with a walk and two RBIs and is hitting .438 over his last four games.
• Every starter had a hit except Hanley.

Notes:

-The Jimmy Fund annual Radio-Telethon is going on right now, donate if you can.