Red Sox lose Amiel Sawdaye to Diamondbacks

Amiel Sawdaye has chosen to follow Mike Hazen to Arizona to take on the Diamondbacks’ assistant GM role.

So this is bad.

When Dave Dombrowski was brought to Boston in 2016, he very pointedly did not enact a sweeping regime change. All Ben Cherington’s people were kept around, and even Cherington himself was given the option of keeping his job, even if it wouldn’t have had the same power (which, of course, meant there was no chance he would stay, but still).

The reasoning was fairly obvious. This was still very much The House That Theo Epstein Built. For any and all missteps that he and Cherington might have made in their time here, they were still responsible for bringing three World Series in the span of ten years to a city that had gone without for 86.

Now? There’s a lot of minor players left, and maybe some of them picked things up from Hazen and Sawdaye and the like, but Allard Baird is the most senior member still around from the Epstein days and, well...we’ve seen him in charge once in the past, and it hasn’t been entirely pretty. Hopefully he picked up a few things along the way, though, because otherwise, we’re talking about bit part players.

Sawdaye, for his part, was the man who built the farm system. You know the one. It’s produced quite a few good players in recent years, and is pretty much the foundation on which this season’s division-winning team was built. In many ways, Sawdaye deserves more credit than anyone else for 2016.

Dave Dombrowski, of course, is not without his own credentials. The Tigers won a lot of games in his time in charge and made plenty of trips to the playoffs which, all things considered, is probably a better representation of successful team-building than World Series wins.

But when he came to town and was given full command, I don’t think the Red Sox were expecting to hemorrhage front office talent at quite such a rapid pace. It’s not the sort of loss that is felt immediately, but with these two gone, it’s truly Dombrowski’s ship and Dombrowski’s ship alone. And frankly, it’s harder to be confident in the future of this team now than it was yesterday.

The Red Sox have lost some good men. Not on the field, no, but some good men all-the-same.