Shank On Former Red Sox Boss Dave Dombrowski

Unable to rag on the New England Patriots after last night's 33-3 stomping of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Shank sets his sights on the former Sox president of baseball operations.

Dave Dombrowski is out as baseball boss of the Red Sox.

The news broke after midnight that Boston’s president of baseball operations had been fired.

Fair or unfair, this felt inevitable. I wrote last month that I would be shocked if Dombrowski was still GM next year and those words were greeted with stony silence on Jersey Street. No one came to the defense of a boss that had just won the World Series and had finished in first place in each of his first three full seasons.

Dombrowski did exactly what he was hired to do when the Sox brought him on board in the summer of 2015. He traded prospects for veteran talent. He signed big name free agents. He threw around contract extensions like fun-sized Halloween candies. He ignored draft and development. And he ignored a lot of the people who worked at Fenway Park.

To some extent, one of the ignored people also included Shank himself. Curious that this column seems to lay all the blame for this season's performance at his feet; nary a word about the players themselves. That part of it doesn't matter, as long as Shank has his fall guy.