Christmas came early for the Red Sox. Dave Dombrowski, the president of baseball operations, didn’t wait around for the 25th. He delivered his gifts on Dec. 6, a day that may be remembered as one of the busiest and most impactful in the long history of Boston baseball.

Dombrowski began the day with a trade bringing reliever Tyler Thornburg to town and ended it with the free-agent signing of first baseman/designated Mitch Moreland. In the middle of those two deals came the big gift, the blockbuster trade that made Chris Sale a member of the Red Sox.

Sale is in the prime of one of the best pitching careers in recent years. He has struck out 200 or more batters in each of the last four years and has been in the top six in AL Cy Young Award voting for five straight years.

He joins Rick Porcello and David Price as the new Big Three in Boston, the top of a rotation that has Vegas bookmakers picking the Sox as the team to beat in the American League in 2017.

Dombrowski has made it clear he’s willing to roll the dice and trade top prospects for big-league talent. He did it last winter to get closer Craig Kimbrel, did it again midseason with the acquisition of Drew Pomeranz, and struck again last week by moving Travis Shaw and six minor-league prospects to bring in Sale and Thornburg.

Could these moves come back to haunt the Sox? Of course. Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech could have long, successful careers with the White Sox. Time will tell. What we do know right now is the Red Sox have a considerably better roster today than they did when they won the AL East last season.

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Major League Baseball has become an industry obsessed with the future. We constantly hear about the Next Big Thing, and GM’s hold onto prospects like they are worth their weight in gold.

Some, however, turn into fool’s gold. For every Mike Trout there are hundreds of prospects who don’t pan out. You don’t have to go very far back to find examples in Boston. Will Middlebrooks was supposed to be the next great right-handed hitter for Boston. Since leaving Boston, he has been up-and-down between the majors and minors. The Sox invested $72.5 million in Cuban free agent Rusney Castillo. He’s no longer on the big-league roster.

It’s refreshing to hear Dombrowski talk about a chance to win now. When the Yankees mumble about the Red Sox roster (GM Brian Cashman saying the Sox are now the Golden State Warriors), it shows how far this team has come from the recent stretch of three last-place finishes in four years.

There are plenty of critics of these deals, people who say the Red Sox gave up too much in potential talent to improve the roster now. Perhaps Dombrowski is mortgaging the future. That didn’t seem to matter Saturday when tickets went on sale for the coming season and the optimism was obvious at the team’s annual Christmas at Fenway event.

When I spoke with Dombrowski at the event, it was clear the team feels pretty good about the coming season. Both he and Manager John Farrell said the Red Sox room at the winter meetings erupted into cheers when the Sale deal became official.

The Red Sox returned to the playoffs in Dombrowski’s first season at the helm of Boston’s baseball operations. After being swept in the first round, it was clear the team wanted to improve its pitching staff.

It did, in a big way. In one hectic day, Dombrowski got all of his holiday shopping done.

Tom Caron is a studio host for the Red Sox broadcast on NESN. His column appears in the Portland Press Herald on Tuesdays.


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