Phillies hire Dave Dombrowski as president of baseball ops

Dave Dombrowski has been hired as Phillies president of baseball operations.

The wait is almost over. The Philadelphia Phillies are in “advanced stages of serious talks” to hire Dave Dombrowski to become their next president of baseball operations, according to The Athletic’s Jayson Stark. When official, Dombrowski would replace current team president Andy MacPhail, who will likely step down from his position ahead of the final season of his contract.

Update: According to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, Dave Dombrowski has officially been hired as the Phillies president of baseball operations on a four-year, $20 million contract.

Dombrowski’s baseball career has spanned decades, with his first general manager role coming with the Montreal Expos in 1988. He eventually lead the Florida Marlins to its first World Series championship in 1997, before taking the helm of the Detroit Tigers and helping them to two pennants in 2006 and 2012.  From 2015-19, Dombrowski was in charge of the Red Sox, who posted three seasons of 93 wins or more, coupled with a 2018 World Series championship.

Dombrowski alone has four pennants and has won two World Series (1997, 2018) — which is three shy of the Phillies’ seven all-time pennants, but matches their championships in 1980 and 2008.

“In his last turn running a major-league front office, Dombrowski was the architect of the 2018 Red Sox team that won 108 games in the regular season, beat two 100-win teams in October and then toppled the Dodgers in the World Series,” Stark writes. But he was fired less than 11 months later after clashing with ownership over the future course of the franchise.

MLB Network’s Jon Morosi first linked the Phillies to Dombrowski back in mid-October. Less than 10 days later, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Scott Lauber reported that the longtime baseball front office executive was interested in joining the Phillies front office only if he had “complete autonomy” and reported only to Managing Partner John Middleton.

Since then, however, Dombrowski reportedly made it known that he was committed to remain in Nashville to try and bring a Major League Baseball franchise to the city. Considering this, Red Sox beat writer Chris Cotillo says he has heard from people close to Dombrowski that they are “shocked” about him reportedly being close to joining the Phillies.

According to Stark, Middleton re-approached Dombrowski earlier this week, once learning that the Minnesota Twins’ Thad Levine and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Josh Byrnes were no longer interested in the team’s front office position.

After a series of discussions with Middleton and MacPhail, Dombrowski determined the job was “an attractive enough option to revisit,” said Stark, adding the group has since made “significant progress” toward a deal. “Assuming that agreement doesn’t unravel at the last minute, the Phillies are about to hand the keys to their franchise to one of the most accomplished front-office figures of the past 30 years,” writes Stark.

Both in 2006 and 2018, Baseball America  named Dombrowski an Executive of the Year. The Los Angeles Angels and New York Mets were the two other organizations also linked to having interest in Dombrowski this offseason.