When the Red Sox tabbed Ben Cherington to replace Theo Epstein last fall, some saw the choice to promote an executive who'd actually been in the organization longer than his predecessor as a continuance of the previous regime.

After all, he'd been part of winning two World Series. Part of pulling off the deal that landed Josh Beckett in Boston. Part of negotiating the trade that acquired Adrian Gonzalez from San Diego. Part of the upper-level powwow about the wisdom of paying for Carl Crawford. He'd been part of — for better or worse — many of the decisions that shaped the franchise over the latter portion of the least decade.

But back then, and really until he got settled in the job, nobody could've known that the Red Sox weren't simply hiring someone to come in and extend what Epstein had built.

They were hiring a stone-cold executioner.

It may have been only 10 months ago today that the native son of Meriden, N.H., was officially rewarded with his dream job, but even in that short amount of time Cherington has already established a reputation for making decisions with little regard for sentimentality or reputation — a critical capability for the man essentially charged with fixing the mess that has been festering on Yawkey Way.

That reputation began to develop in spring training, when he moved on from franchise fixtures Tim Wakefield and Jason Varitek. It continued in the early summer, when he sent the popular Kevin Youkilis to Chicago. And then it exploded this weekend in the biggest move of all, a blockbuster in which he shipped Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Nick Punto to Los Angeles in exchange for James Loney and four prospects.

All four were players he had helped bring to Boston. Beckett was a guy who helped win a title and was a legitimate Cy Young candidate just last season. Gonzalez put up excellent numbers over the duration of his two seasons with the club. And there was hope Crawford could return to stardom once he was healthy and comfortable.

But when the Dodgers presented him with an opportunity to reboot his own franchise, Cherington didn't think about what had been or what could be. He instead seized the opportunity to eradicate more than a quarter-billion dollars worth of future salaries from his payroll — even if that meant admitting mistakes were made, acknowledging the enormity of the mess within Fenway's walls, and effectively conceding this season and possibly next.

Each of those concerns sentiment. And sentiment isn't Cherington's concern.

His concern is lifting the Red Sox out of the rut that will result in their third straight season without a playoff appearance, and has seemingly sent the organization spiraling back to the dysfunctional state that the group led by John Henry and Tom Werner bought into back in 2002.

And while their ownership group, particularly team president Larry Lucchino, surely played some role in getting this Dodgers' deal done — transactions involving so much money can't happen without major consent from those who pay the bills — this trade is ultimately about getting the Sox back to a position where baseball is the priority of the operation.

It's about alleviating themselves from burdensome contracts that limited their ability to improve, it's about forging the financial freedom to enable roster flexibility, and it's about really giving themselves a chance to truly enact a change in culture.

The trade absolutely wouldn't have happened without the fiscal factors, considering Los Angeles wanted Gonzalez so badly they were willing to absolve Boston of the undesirable contracts it signed with Beckett and Crawford — but moving forward the money the Sox have saved will ultimately be insignificant if it's not reallocated properly. If it's not invested in ways that bring this team back to a championship level. If they don't use it to fix things on the field, in a way that improves the baseball team if not the brand.

On paper, that's all up to Cherington to make that happen, and these next few months should show whether he is really in charge of the baseball operations. If the team sticks with Bobby Valentine for another season, and retains the manager who was essentially selected by Lucchino, it will be clear that the business side still has sizable influence in on-field decisions.

Though if they fire Valentine, and let Cherington choose the next dugout leader, it'll be an even stronger sign that this is his team. And — largely free of Epstein's players and Lucchino's manager — it'll be his decisions that determine how long the Sox stay mired in the realm of third and fourth place.

It'll be a process, and probably won't take less than a year or two. But the two pitching prospects acquired from the Dodgers, Rubby de la Rosa and Allen Webster, could be part of the solution. So could other exciting young parts of Boston's minor-league system.

Then beyond that, they'll need to decide who else stays as part of the solution. Presumably Dustin Pedroia, Jon Lester, Will Middlebrooks and Clay Buchholz are in that mix, and extending the contract of Jacoby Ellsbury is more plausible now that there's money to spend.

But the liberating message of the deal with Los Angeles is that no contract is too crippling to move, no player is too talented to be untouchable. If an offer is deemed to be in the best interest of the baseball team, it will be considered, it will be explored, it will be executed.

That's something Red Sox fans have yearned to be convinced of for a couple years now. At last, even with some losing sure to follow short-term, they have reason to be happy about the direction their team is headed.

Not that Cherington — unaffected by sentiment or sentimentality, as any good baseball man — necessarily cares.

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Dave D'Onofrio covers Boston sports for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. His e-mail address is ddonof13@gmail.com. Twitter: @davedonofrio