The Baltimore Orioles have more talent than they often get credit for, but new GM Dan Duquette will have the unenviable task of figuring out what's going on with the team's young pitchers.
According to this tweet from SI.com’s Jon Heyman, the Baltimore Orioles have a new general manager. (No word on whether white smoke appeared above Camden Yards.)
Dan Duquette has agreed to become orioles gm. Announcement tuesday
Duquette has been out of baseball so long that his job-before-last was as general manager of a team that no longer exists, the Montreal Expos. And yes, I know the Expos still exist as the Washington Nationals. But still.
Duquette built a pretty good team in Montreal; after he built a team that might have won the World Series in 1994 if not for the labor stoppage, he was GM of the Boston Red Sox from 1994-2002 and there, had three playoff teams before being dismissed when the John Henry group bought the team.
Duquette isn’t anywhere close to Peter Angelos’ first choice to be Orioles GM; several people had already turned it down before Angelos turned to a man who’s been out of baseball for nearly a decade. He’s got a lot of work to do; the Orioles haven’t had a winning season since 1997 and have lost 92 or more games each of the last six years.
Why are the Orioles having such a hard time filling their open GM position? Perhaps these not made-up transcripts of actual conversations will illuminate what's going on.
This is getting to be an interesting little dance; by the time it’s over the Orioles will likely have interviewed just about anyone currently working in a MLB front office. Boston Globe reporter Pete Abraham, in this notes column, writes that yet another man will speak to the Baltimore franchise about their GM vacancy:
The Baltimore Orioles have asked permission to speak to Red Sox vice president of player personnel and pro scouting Allard Baird about their general manager vacancy. The Orioles have restarted their search after being turned down by Toronto assistant GM Tony LaCava. Baird has been with the Red Sox since 2006. The New Hampshire native was GM of the Royals from 2000-06.
Baird didn’t have a good run with the Royals, but having worked for Theo Epstein in Boston, perhaps some of Epstein’s front office savvy has rubbed off on him. Craig Calcaterra points out the problem for just about anyone interviewing:
Probably because whoever takes the GM job realizes that they wouldn’t be running the team. Peter Angelos and his faceless minions scattered around the front office would. And then there’s Buck Showalter down below who probably has his own ideas about personnel and the like.
Calcaterra suggests that Angelos could just give the job to Showalter. If people keep running away, that might just happen.
Source: Dan Duquette to interview with #Orioles for GM vacancy tomorrow.
Duquette was the general manager of the Montreal Expos from 1991 to 1994, helping build one of the greatest what-if teams in recent memory, the 1994 Montreal Expos. He left the Expos for the Boston Red Sox, where he remained until 2002, when he was replaced by Theo Epstein under new ownership.
Duquette is a two-time Sporting News Executive of the Year, winning in 1992 with the Expos and in 1995 with the Red Sox. While Theo Epstein gets (and deserves) most of the credit for the Red Sox team that won the World Series in 2004, the farm system and players acquired by Duquette (Hanley Ramirez, Derek Lowe, Jason Varitek, to name a few) certainly deserve a lot of credit as well. He acquired Pedro Martinez twice -- once for the Expos, and one for the Red Sox -- which seems like a really, really good idea in retrospect.
He was criticized, though, for letting Roger Clemens go for what he termed "the twilight of his career." Clemens went on to win four more Cy Youngs and play 11 more years, mostly on the strength of healthy eating and demanding workouts.
The Orioles' general manager search has become a bit of a story more because of the people who are refusing the job rather than the people who are interviewing for it. But Duquette is a well-known name, even if he hasn't worked as a GM in the majors for over a decade.
A list of his transactions can be found at the Baseball Reference Bullpen. It's a better list than you might think. Just know that Peter Angelos would have vetoed all the good ones.
