In a year where it seems like every team has been hunting for a general manager, dozens of names have been tossed about: former GMs, assistant GMs ready to take over for their current team or accept a promotion with another team, and long-rumored potential candidates like Kim Ng. One name that didn’t get much attention until he emerged as the front-runner in Baltimore: former Red Sox General Manager Dan Duquette. After nearly a decade away from a management job in Major League Baseball, Duquette has returned to rebuild a Red Sox rival in a tough AL East.

End of an Era

Dan Duquette was the last GM of the Yawkey ownership and failed to end the championship drought while the team was still owned by the family. During the eight seasons between 1994 when he won the job and 2002 when he was fired, Duquette’s teams went 656-574, reaching the playoffs three times and taking home one AL East division title. Duquette drafted Nomar Garciaparra and Kevin Youkilis, although the latter didn’t reach the majors during Duquette’s time in Boston. He acquired Pedro Martinez, Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe in trades. He brought Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon to Boston, and for what it’s worth, eventually freed the team of clubhouse cancer and dinosaur denier Carl Everett. These moves built the foundation that the Red Sox would transform into some of the greatest teams to take the field under John Henry’s ownership.

On the other hand, Duquette draftee Justin Duchscherer was traded for backup catcher Doug Mirabelli and plucky shortstop David Eckstein was lost on waivers to the Angels. Duquette also failed to sign draft pick Mark Teixeira, a move which could have altered the fortunes of the early 2000′s Red Sox tremendously.

Overall his tenure in Boston was nothing to sneeze at, and maybe, had the Yankees not gone on such an amazing run at the end of the last century, one of Duquette’s teams could have gotten lucky and made a run at a World Series. With Pedro and Nomar in their primes, a few breaks in the Sox favor could have changed history.

However, the Red Sox string of second place finishes and their inability to make it past the ALCS during Duquette’s reign left the fans wanting more. The bad taste surrounding Duquette’s time in Boston would be forever tied to one moment in 1996 when the GM said these words: “The Red Sox and our fans were fortunate to see Roger Clemens play in his prime and we had hoped to keep him in Boston during the twilight of his career.”  The twilight of his career. Those words would sting Red Sox Nation while Clemens took his skills to Toronto, New York, and Houston, winning Cy Young awards along the way and made Duquette look foolish.

Today, we know that part of Clemens’ rejuvenation was fueled by performance enhancing drugs. While this may be of little consolation to Duquette, it at least partially validates his assessment of Clemens in the mid-90′s.

When John Henry’s ownership group completed their purchase of the Red Sox there was still a lot of work to be done before Henry could really make the team his own. In his behind the scenes book about the Red Sox, Feeding the Monster, Seth Mnookin describes the Duquette days as “needlessly combative.” Henry said the secrecy surrounding the team was worrisome and that under his control the Sox would be “committed to being open and having open lines of communication” in response to stories about minor league pitching coaches worrying about being fired if they spoke to the press. The money quote from a reporter Henry relayed to Mnookin: “Get out your broom and sweep out the Duke.” When Duquette reached the end of the road in Boston, he landed hard.

After Boston

The aftermath for Dan Duquette was not as welcoming as the GM shuffle that has taken place this year. The former Red Sox and Expos executive found himself shut out of the exclusive network of Major League Baseball. In America. Duquette was part of a team that formed the Israel Baseball League. The league lasted just one season, 2007. However, Israel, denied a team for the 2009 World Baseball Classic, will be participating in the 2013 WBC. At the very least, the effort helped baseball gain traction in another country, while graduating several players to other professional baseball leagues.

Now that Duquette is back in the helm of a team, time will tell if the executive can rebuild a historic franchise. Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, and Matt Weiters form the core to build around. Uber-prospect Manny Machado looms on the horizon, and the O’s have a stable of pitching prospects who have struggled with injuries, ineffectiveness or both.

With a three-year contract in place, Duquette has his work set out for him, as the AL East is a tough division with the Red Sox, Yankees, and Rays battling each other for playoff contention, and the Blue Jays are pretty good too. The next wave of prospects should arrive during Duquette’s tenure and if he can surround them with some excellent under-the-radar pickups while drafting well, the Orioles could make enough progress to keep him around long enough to see his team be competitive.

The ultimate wild card: the Orioles have money. Baltimore was in on the Mark Teixeira sweepstakes a few years ago and it wouldn’t be impossible to see them surface as a mystery team for Prince Fielder or even Albert Pujols. At the end of the day, Duquette may leave his mark on baseball as an Oriole, rather than a Red Sox.

Having missed the playoffs for the second straight year, the Red Sox are in flux. Terry Francona is gone, Theo Epstein is on his way to the Chicago Cubs, and Boston fans are still trying to understand just what went wrong during a season that began with lofty expectations. In a stunning turn around, critics of the team are no longer bragging about their front office outsmarting others. Instead of looking at mistakes and successes, they attack the front office, and Epstein himself, like Carl Everett at a lecture on dinosaurs, nay-saying all the way.

While the team is not above criticism, this is a disturbing sign from a city that claims to have intelligent fans. As the Tea Party has fired up anti-intellectual fervor among political types, Boston’s media, particularly sports radio, has begun to provoke the rage of the masses against the sound structure the is the Boston Red Sox. Their goal: the complete dismantling of the process that has produced one of the best runs of success in franchise history.

What Moneyball Is and What It Is Not

Taken from the book of the same name, the “moneyball” strategy is often mistaken for the high-on base, high-slugging, slow-footed, sluggers exemplified during the season chronicled by Michael Lewis. While these were the hallmarks of Billy Beane’s team-building plan in the early 2000s, they did not by themselves define the entire philosophy of the Oakland A’s.

Oakland, then and now, required a smaller payroll because of their financial situation. At the same time, it is hard to build a fan base with a losing product on the field. The long and short of it is that “moneyball 1.0” took advantage of a market inefficiency in slugging and on-base guys. Because David Justice and Scott Hatteberg were available at discounted rates meant that Oakland went after them.

During their playoff run in 2006, Oakland again turned to market inefficiencies, in this case the old (Frank Thomas who hit .270/.381/.545 with 39 HR) and the crazy (Milton Bradley who hit .276/.370/.447 with 14 HR and 10 SB). In concert with a strong pitching performance from Dan Haren (acquired from the Cardinals prior to the 2005 season for Mark Mulder), a solid season from Eric Chavez, and a 35 home run year from Nick Swisher, the Oakland A’s won 93 games during the regular season. While the normal caveat about the AL West applies, that’s not bad for a team with a payroll just north of $62 million dollars.

“Moneyball” is not simply looking at a stats sheet or “a computer” (like “Carmine”) and choosing a name and production line, rather it is much simpler: exploiting market weaknesses and inefficiencies. In his study of the Tampa Bay Rays in The Extra 2%, Jonah Keri talks about the success enjoyed by the Rays after the team reorganized, and rethought, their baseball operations from top to bottom. The new-look Rays nominally borrowed from the world of finance to put their plans into action. They tried to practice positive arbitrage in their player acquisitions, opened the first baseball academy in Brazil, and listened to trade offers large and small. In an alternate universe, their story is the Michael Lewis smash hit and “moneyball” would refer to the acquisition of players like Edwin Jackson and Ben Zobrist, players who were nothing special at the time they were acquired but became major contributors to a team fighting for survival.

Like Bill Beane’s A’s, the Rays have reached the playoffs and even the World Series, but have yet to walk away with a championship. Even the best strategy, whether it is called “moneyball,” “the extra two percent,” or “the Steinbrenner’s bountiful wallet” can’t guarantee success. They are merely guidelines used to attempt to field a competitive team every year that, with some luck, can win three postseason series.

The Internals

While we don’t know exactly the measurements used in player evaluation by the Red Sox, we know that Bill James is an advisor and that John Henry wanted Billy Beane to become Boston’s GM when he purchased the team. When those plans fell through, Theo Epstein, protege of another successful baseball executive, former Padres and current Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers, got the job. The rest, of course, is history.

We do know that like the classic “moneyball” strategy, the front office has valued on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and their combination in OPS. The success in exploiting these numbers during the early days is memorable: Bill Mueller, Kevin Millar, Mark Bellhorn, and David Ortiz are clear standouts. They were high on-base guys with power. Mueller even won a batting title, and of course he hit 35 points over his career average to do it. In 2003 and 2004, Mueller’s home batting average crushed his away numbers, a pattern observed in a number of Red Sox players during Epstein’s tenure. While home field in itself provides some comfort to a player as they spend half of every season hitting there, the Red Sox in particular have looked to capitalize on this.

With Fenway Park’s unusual dimensions – Pesky Pole, the Green Monster, the Triangle – the front office has attempted to find players who, like Mueller, are underrated in other parks but can thrive in Fenway. Another guy often put into the “made for Fenway” group is Mike Lowell. During his five years with the Red Sox, he hit more doubles at Fenway four times, more home runs three times, and had better average twice and better on-base and slugging number three times each. In 2007, his best year with the Red Sox, Lowell’s home numbers (.373/.418/.575) dwarfed his performance on the road (.276/.339/.428). While Lowell was not an Epstein acquisition, he was a product of the group the took over during Theo’s break after 2005. A group including his most likely replacement this time around, Ben Cherington.

These Guys Aren’t Robots

While all the credit in the world is given to Epstein, sabremetrics, and smart evaluation of player abilities for the success, critics rail against “the computer” that supposedly makes the rest of the moves while the front office lies dormant. This is usually when words like heart, character, fire, dirt dog, clubhouse leader, etc. are thrown around. Realistically, of course, every team makes mistakes. Big ones. Johan Santana and Josh Hamilton were passed over by many teams, albeit for different reasons. Albert Pujols was drafted in the 13th round with the 402nd pick in 1999. The Red Sox, of course, selected current member of the Worcester Tornadoes Rick Asadoorian seventeenth overall. It happens.

Among notable “mistakes” by the Red Sox are Edgar Renteria, J.D. Drew, and Julio Lugo. I’m going to leave Daisuke Matsuzaka off this list. He was not the pitcher in American baseball that he was in Japan, and during the World Baseball Classic, but the dynamic of signing a pitcher from Japan add more variables than signing a guy out of high school or college: a major league commitment is required before he has played a single game in America. At the time of the Matsuzaka deal, he was one of the best, most highly-regarded pitchers in the world. It didn’t work out, but given the care the Red Sox organization seems to take in their work, it’s likely they did their due diligence and it just didn’t work out.

Often forgotten, Kai Igawa was banished to the Yankees’ minor league system, even in 2011 when the team entered Spring Training with Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia, there was not even a whisper of Igawa as a rotation candidate.

Like just about every other Red Sox fan who lived through the 2004 season, I wanted to see Orlando Cabrera back in a Sox uniform for many seasons. For whatever reason, the Red Sox, after seeking out the shortstop for several seasons before the famous Nomar Garciaparra trade, soured on Cabrera after the World Series. Whether it was something Cabrera did, perhaps “bad clubhouse presence” or the opportunity to upgrade with veteran Edgar Renteria on the market, we will likely never know, but the Red Sox moved on.

Renteria had two excellent seasons in 2002 and 2003, but his 2004 was a step backward. Essentially, he forgot all the progress he made during those seasons. Entering 2002, Renteria had never posted a strikeout percentage lower than 12%. For the next two seasons, the shortstop struck out just 9.4% and 8.1% before returning to a more typical 12.1% in his walk year with the Cardinals. While he would rediscover his ability to get on base after leaving Boston, Renteria hit .276/.335/.385 in his lone Red Sox season. Marco Scutaro, in his first season with the Red Sox, hit .275/.333/.388.

What We Know We Don’t Know

We know the Red Sox have believed in numbers for a long time. We know John Henry wants a forward-thinking front office. We almost certainly know Theo Epstein will be replaced by Ben Cherington. We know that the Red Sox have the money to make risky purchases (Matsuzaka) and sign veterans on the decline (Lackey) or to pay a salary that might be higher than expected for the player they want (Drew). Injuries are certainly to blame for missing the playoffs in 2006 and 2010 while also limiting the resources in the starting rotation in 2011. Cherington wasn’t afraid to trade Hanley Ramirez for Josh Beckett and Lowell, a move Epstein likely wouldn’t have made. He also wasn’t afraid to eat the cost of Edgar Renteria.

There are a lot of reasons to be frustrated by the Red Sox right now, but Cherington, as a trusted member of the front office, is likely to continue the current strategy. There are no guarantees in baseball, but if the front office continues to use both popular public stats and their own internal metrics, the team should be fine.

The 2011 season is the low-point for the John Henry-owned Red Sox. Not since 2003 has Red Sox Nation faced such a tragedy. This year, however, there was no Aaron Boone moment to provide a quick death to Boston’s World Series ambitions. This was a death by a thousand paper cuts. Eight-year manager Terry Francona and the Red Sox have already parted ways, on somewhat mutual terms, and general manager Theo Epstein may be next to go. The training staff and pitching coach Curt Young may need to dust off their resumes as well.

Managers do have a limited shelf life (see Joe Torre’s tenure in New York), so Tito should not be targeted as the bad guy here. Perhaps Epstein and Red Sox ownership wanted to bring in a different manager didn’t want to change horses in midstream. After all, why mess with success? Theo Epstein, while he shares some responsibility as GM, is likewise not the villain here. On the balance, his moves have been successful, and without injuries to key players, have built another strong core of talent in Boston. Ultimately, the blame for missing the playoffs lies with the players.

Hall Pass

Even among the 25 men who entered the season as the team to beat, there are a few players who get an immediate pass. Jacoby Ellsbury, Marco Scutaro, Dustin Pedroia, Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Jonathan Papelbon formed the core of a team that looked unstoppable for four months. At one point Ellsbury, Pedroia, Ortiz, and Gonzalez were all in contention for MVP honors, and at the end of the season Ellsbury packed his bags with a better than even shot of walking away with the award himself. We have to wait a few weeks to find out if he’s the MVP, but it’s safe to say his injury-plagued 2010 campaign is in the past for the franchise, the player, and the fans.

While he was on the mound for unlikely comebacks fueled by Orioles’ utility infielder Robert Andino, Jonathan Papelbon’s failing is a product of circumstance. The hard-throwing closer put up his best season since 2007 with rebounds in WHIP, strikeouts per nine innings and strikeout to walk ratio. Whatever the righty had been lacking the past few seasons seemed to have returned. Whether it was mental, physical, or free agent year magic, Papelbon was once again a force to be reckoned with. The truth about relief pitchers, closers especially, is that outside of Mariano Rivera, there is no such thing as a guarantee. Even Rivera isn’t perfect, but he sets unrealistic expectations for every other pitcher. If Carl Crawford makes a play that one of the best outfielders in baseball is expected to make, Papelbon gets out of the 9th inning in Game 162. In the big picture, Papelbon may have been on the mound when the season ended, but he performed as a top tier closer this season.

Without question, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Clay Buchholz are absolved from the collapse due to injury. Buchholz’s absence was probably the single largest factor in the Red Sox disappointing finish as his replacements, Tim Wakefield, Andrew Miller, and Kyle Weiland, all failed to perform at his level, but the circumstances regarding his availability were out of his control. Thankfully his back should be fully healed and ready to go in spring training.

Rocks and Hard Places

While Carl Crawford was certainly the most disappointing player on the Red Sox in 2011 (2010: .307/.356/.495 with 19 HR and 46 SB | 2011: .255/.289/.405 with 11 HR and 18 SB), the Red Sox still led the league in runs, hits, doubles, on-base percentage, and slugging while taking second place in walks and third place in home runs and triples. Don’t let sports radio fool you: this was one of the best teams ever and Carl Crawford’s down year was nothing compared to Adam Dunn, Alex Rios, or Vernon Wells.

People are looking to blame beer, conditioning, computers, the manager, pitching coach, and more for the Red Sox bloated payroll and lack of playoff wins since the 2008 ALCS. Those people are wrong. The blame for missing the playoffs (aside from Clay Buchholz’s aforementioned back) rests solely on the pitching staff. Primarily on three men: Jon Lester, Josh Beckett, and of course, John Lackey.

Don’t misunderstand, Lester and Beckett were valuable contributors this season. Lester made 31 starts, threw 191 innings and struck out almost a batter every inning. Beckett enjoyed a tremendous bounce-back season after a very disappointing 2010 and ended the year with an ERA under three for the first time in his career while cutting his walk rate by nearly one per nine innings. Both had terrific seasons.

The problem? Josh Beckett made four starts in September. In back-to-back outings against the Baltimore Orioles, he allowed 6 runs. Beckett allowed more than three runs in a start just six times this season: three times against Baltimore and once each against the Yankees, Phillies, and Mariners.

Lester similarly hit a rough stretch at the end of the year. Fresh off a decent outing against the Yankees, where he allowed one run over five innings on September 1st, and a dominant 7-inning, 11-strikeout, 3-hit, zero-run performance against the Blue Jays five days later, a series of bad starts came as a surprise. In his next two starts, Lester faced off against the Tampa Bay Rays. He allowed four runs in four innings and four runs in seven innings in Tropicana Field and Fenway Park respectively. He also allowed as many walks as strikeouts (7) over the two losses. Lester would then face the Yankees in a 2.2 inning, 8-run disaster. The Sox lefty did recover somewhat in Game 162, allowing just two runs in six difficult innings, while pitching on three days rest. Although the bullpen would eventually cost Lester the win, this is not the type of game that brings down teams – a few such losses every season are impossible to prevent.

The bigger issue facing Terry Francona heading in to the season finale: with a seriously depleted back end of the the rotation, why couldn’t his aces come through with just one more win? Both starters entering slumps as the season drew to a close left Francona with little ability to right the ship. But two pitchers do not a rotation make. There was another veteran pitcher on the staff. A “bulldog” on the mound who took the ball every five days and liked to see every game through to the finish. A prized free agent acquisition. This was of course, John Lackey.

A New World of Trouble

When the John Lackey deal was first announced, the biggest question it raised was “what does this mean for Josh Beckett?” Entering his last season before free agency, Beckett, somewhat replaced by Jon Lester for the title of staff ace since the 2007 season concluded, seemed sure to depart once Lackey was in the fold. Rumors about a bidding war with the Yankees were aleady swirling. The former Angel was no longer at his best, but with Lester ascending to the top of the rotation, Lackey surely could handle the duties of a number two or three starter with Clay Buchholz emerging and Daisuke Matsuzaka still attempting to harness the great stuff he showed in Japan where he was nothing short of dominant.

After the Red Sox extended Josh Beckett, expectations for the starting staff were nothing short of historic. The Red Sox entered the 2010 season with what some termed as one of the deepest, best starting rotations ever assembled (of course, this was before the four-headed monster in Philadelphia). By the end of the opening weekend in 2010, Lackey was not being asked to anchor the staff for years to come, merely to fill a role doing what he did best: eat innings with gusto and give his team a chance to win every time he took the mound. Today, he is possibly the worst pitcher in baseball.

After a disappointing first season in Boston which saw Lackey go 14-11 with a 4.40 ERA, a career worst 1.419 WHIP and the second lowest K/9 of his career it didn’t seem like things could get much worse. He dealt with some off-field issues during the season and was pitching in the AL East rather than the AL West for the first time in his career. A new team, new park, and a new division generate a good amount of slack for a struggling athlete. Lackey entered 2011 with muted expectations.

What happened this season cannot be described as less than disaster. Lackey, a competitor on the mound, had become a shell of himself. This much is not new. What is: after his final appearance of the season, Lackey was 12-12 with a 6.41 ERA. Yes, John Lackey was a .500 pitcher this season. Pitcher wins measure something, but more of them doesn’t necessarily indicate value.

For reference, a quality start consists of six innings of work in which the starting pitcher allows three runs or fewer. In other words, a pitcher who always turned in quality starts would have an ERA of 4.50 at the strictest definition. On June 5th, Lackey’s ERA stood at a whopping 8.01 before his start against the Oakland A’s. The remainder of his season would consist of violent swings – positive and negative outings – but his ERA did trend downwards through the end of August. Although four earned runs in seven innings is not exactly a stellar outing, even against the Yankees.

Again, Lackey is one of the veterans on the pitching staff. He has won a World Series. He has been to the playoffs. Before arriving in Boston, Lackey was in the top few tiers of starting pitchers. As we now know, the Red Sox needed just two more wins (or Tampa Bay losses) in September to have reached the playoffs, one to have forced a 163rd game against the Rays. Oddly enough, Lackey would have been in line to pitch that game. In his first three September starts, Lackey faced Texas, Tampa, and Toronto. He allowed six, five, and two runs as the Red Sox lost all three matchups. Against Toronto, while he only allowed two earned runs, Lackey lasted just 5.1 innings.

His next start was against those increasingly pesky Baltimore Orioles. Four and a third innings and eight runs later, Lackey was gone. The Orioles lost 93 games this year in their fourth straight last place finish. The Red Sox offence picked up Lackey by scoring 18 runs that day. When the Red Sox talk about getting Lackey “back on track” they certainly mean fewer outings like that one. Between 2002 and 2009, Lackey allowed six or more earned runs 20 times. In his two years with the Red Sox he has “accomplished” the feat on 12 occasions.

Looking Back

The Red Sox assembled what, at the start of the season, could be called one of the best teams ever. A lost season by Carl Crawford didn’t help them, but didn’t hold back the most potent offense in baseball. While Daisuke Matsuzaka only rarely lived up to the hype surrounding his move to America, his solid contributions, if not spectacular, were a valuable asset out of the fourth or fifth spot in the rotation. As we saw this year, a pitcher who can go five or six innings and not get shelled every time he takes the mound is a valuable guy. Clay Buchholz’s back turned out to be the lead domino which, when time was running out, could not be help up by the veterans of the staff.

In any situation, when things get bad we turn to those who we most believe can save us. For the Red Sox, still possessing two of the better pitchers in the game, the playoffs were not out of reach. Two strong pitchers can carry a team through the Division Series when they are supported by a strong offense. Had Lackey pulled himself together and summoned even his 2009-era self, the collapse would have been sad, but tragedy would have been avoided. The 2011 season was cut short because when the Red Sox needed a hero, the three guys they expected to count on all came up short.