BOSTON -- Dave Dombrowski’s story, the one he stuck to throughout the season, is that he never stopped believing in Rick Porcello as an elite top-of-the-rotation starter, maybe even one of the best in baseball.
Easy to say that now, right?
But long before Porcello went 22-4 with a 3.15 ERA for the Boston Red Sox and finished on top in the American League Cy Young Award voting that was revealed Wednesday night, he was a first-round draft pick of a Detroit Tigers team run by Dombrowski. It was Dombrowski who gave Porcello a $3.5 million signing bonus out of high school and brought him to the big leagues at age 20. And although Dombrowski traded Porcello after the 2014 season, that was mostly…