Dave Dombrowski isn’t really trying to hear Pablo Sandoval’s excuses.
The Boston Red Sox’s president of baseball operations appeared on WEEI on Tuesday during the WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon presented by Arbella Insurance Foundation and was asked about Sandoval’s comments in The Players’ Tribune after he rejoined the San Francisco Giants this season. The third baseman said he never was comfortable in Boston, but the way Dombrowski described it, that was more of a Sandoval problem than anything.
“Of course, I wasn’t here when he signed,” Dombrowski said. “And I know since I’ve been here — and I believe before I was here — every accommodation was made that we possibly could to try to help him. And it doesn’t make you feel good when you see that in the sense that, for me, he didn’t perform very well is really what it comes down to, and using that as a comfort feeling for a big league player, I don’t think that’s really a very good excuse, per se.
“I think that’s up to him to try to make the adjustment, but the basic reality is it didn’t work. He didn’t play very well. And I think if he would have played well, he would’ve felt comfortable as can be. But he didn’t play very well, and that’s why we made the change, and it was a very unfortunate situation, and we’ll see what happens with him in San Francisco.”
Dombrowski pointed to Sandoval’s decline on the right side of the plate and his lackluster defense at third base as the breaking point. But he’s happy with what they have now with Eduardo Nunez and Rafael Devers at the hot corner.
“We thought they would be good players for us and sort of sparks for us,” Dombrowski said. “Really, when you looked at our club, the biggest hole we had was third base. It sort of stood out. Everywhere else, maybe guys weren’t performing as well as you would like them at times, but there’s not really a big hole there. At third base, we had a hole regularly, so we needed to be in a position where we could fill that. We felt both of them could do that.”
Hear more from Dombrowski in the video above.
Thumbnail photo via Patrick McDermott/USA TODAY Sports Images
