One of the few people with a good excuse for missing reunion was Jim Duquette ‘88, recently promoted to interim general manager of the New York Mets.

Here is an overview story. The Bershire Eagle also ran a nice story with the local-boy-makes good theme. A columnist has some thoughts on the situation. The key paragraphs are:

Duquette has everything but a track record. He has personality and integrity. He has contacts and instincts. He has the skill sets.

He is respected. The Mets rebuffed attempts by Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Baltimore to interview him for their GM job. So it wouldn’t be fair to toss him away after four months.

It’s impossible to re-create conversations that caused the bad calls, so it’s hard to tell where he agreed, or where he differed. But Duquette wanted A-Rod, and passing was the mistake that triggered all the others, like a set of rotten dominoes. Duquette never got the ideas to obtain Bobby Bonilla or Darryl Hamilton, two mistakes of the past. Or of Vaughn, the biggest mistake of the present.

Duquette sounds as if he knows developing their own players is the way to go. But he warned, “You can’t talk about young players and quick fixes in the same sentence.”

Duquette was asked what attribute might guide him, and he said patience would. Duquette knows this needs time. Let’s hope the Wilpons give it to him.

As far as I know, Jim is the highest ranking Eph in sports management, with the exception of George Steinbrenner. For those who don’t follow baseball closely, the Mets, depsite spending a ton of money on player salaries, are doing exceptionally badly. I think that this is bullish for Jim’s prospects since the team has no where to go but up.

My own 2 cents, as a statistician, is that the Mets would be well-served to study the success of the Oakland A’s as chronicled by Michael Lewis in Moneyball. Interested readers can check out this discussion in Slate.