Rival exec: Red Sox are still looking for 'something big'

Dave Dombrowski is clearly never satisfied.

The Boston Red Sox president pulled off multiple trades in a span of a few days earlier this month to improve his ballclub, and he may not be done. A rival executive who's been talking with the Red Sox told Jayson Stark of ESPN that Dombrowski's still searching for "something big" to do before the Aug. 1 deadline.

What that "big" deal could be remains to be seen, and the cost would likely be high if he's indeed targeting a big-name pitcher. The Red Sox have been linked with Chris Sale this week, while Stark noted Dombrowski is apparently a longtime fan of Sonny Gray.

The price tag for star pitchers in an already thin market would mean that the Red Sox would very likely have to include one or both top prospects Andrew Benintendi and Yoan Moncada. Dombrowski's never shied away from making a big splash or trading prospects for an established superstar, as evidenced by his tenure in Detroit when he emptied that system to bring the likes of Miguel Cabrera and David Price, among others, to the Tigers.

But the 59-year-old is insistent his situation in Boston is different than when he was running the Tigers and making bold win-now moves seemingly every summer. With these Red Sox, he explained, it's not just about 2016.

"We're in it to win," Dombrowski told Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald on Sunday. "We're 'all in' it to win. But ... we're not only in it to win this year, we're in it to win some future years too. Keep winning. And we have the foundation to keep doing that. So I don't want to trade every single young player we have for a veteran for two months and then all of a sudden, yeah, we're 'all in' and then we don't have the depth that we need to compete year in and year out.

"The difference is when we were in Detroit at the end, except for last year - which wasn't as good - we didn't worry really very much about upcoming years, for a couple reasons. But, here we are."