The Red Sox traded a gaggle of prospects for Padres closer Craig Kimbrel last week, and the reactions from baseball and the fan base (at least, the part of the fan base that is able to extract itself from 24/7 Patriots obsession) are in. MLB Trade Rumors collected some of those here and here, but they can be summed up in three categories:

1. This deal is Dave Dombrowski incarnate and represents a big departure from the Red Sox’ past philosophy.
2. They overpaid in prospects.
3. They needed to make a win-now move to sell tickets and boost NESN ratings.

Points two and three are not ones that I necessarily disagree with, although I can’t pretend to know much about the prospects dealt, in particular the bottom two. I know my first reaction upon being texted about the deal was, “Margot? NOOOOOOOOOOO,” but it was just a name I knew and not a particular skillset or projection that I liked.

Point one seems to be the most widely held reaction to the deal, but the one that I think, while it tells a nice narrative, is flawed.

Sure, Dombrowski has a history of making win-now moves; he also has worked for organizations with win-now imperatives — the Tigers under an aging Mike Ilitch, and the Marlins constant yo-yoing over whether they feel like winning.

Meanwhile, this doesn’t strike me as a panic move or a departure from traditional Red Sox thinking. Relief pitching is one of the Sox’ weak spots: Koji Uehara and Junichi Tazawa are aging and declining, and there’s no one else to get too excited about, unless you’re still a big believer in Matt Barnes. The Royals just showed how important a dominant bullpen can be, so this seems to be a sensible step toward bringing the Sox up to speed in that department.

Kimbrel is in his prime and under team control for three years at his market value, or maybe even a little lower than that. His traditional numbers dipped last year, but statistical analyses have shown that he appeared in extremely difficult situations and was still among the best in the game at what he does. The Sox used similar reasoning in their (horrible) moves to sign Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval last year, being more enamored of both players because they could be signed at younger ages or for fewer years — and thus theoretically closer to their primes — than other big free agents.

And this Fangraphs assessment finds that the Sox paid in trade assets what would be considered market value, suggesting that they didn’t just panic and push chips to the center of the table.

Add all this up and to me it sounds like they reviewed their weaknesses, targeted a specific cost-effective, in-his-prime player to fill that void, and then carefully calculated what his value should be in terms of prospects and dollars. And if it helps sell a couple tickets, all the better.

So is Dave Dombrowski really all that different from Ben Cherington?