Mariners' search is on for general manager

When the Red Sox meet the Devil Rays in the American League Championship Series, the teams will be monuments to the brave new world of baseball general managers.

Masterminding the Rays' emergence has been Andrew Friedman, a Tulane graduate who was 27 years old and a Bear Stearns and Co. analyst when he was tapped to become their director of baseball development. Two years later, in 2005, he was running baseball operations.

The Red Sox renaissance has been engineered by GM Theo Epstein, a Yale man (and graduate of the University of San Diego Law School), who was 28 — the youngest GM in history — when he was elevated to the big chair in Boston in 2002. Two World Series titles later, he's the standard to which each new whiz kid aspires when handed the keys to a ballclub.

As the Mariners strive to fill their GM position, they can't avoid paying heed to the dramatic changes the job has undergone.

No longer is the prevailing prototype that of the cigar-chomping baseball lifer who uses his gut instincts to formulate a roster — though Pat Gillick, who has guided the Phillies into the National League Championship Series at age 71 (minus the cigar), is proof that the GM job is not the total province of the fuzzy-cheeked.

"The position has changed dramatically through the years," said Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski, who has 20 years' experience with Montreal, Florida and now the Tigers.

"You have to be efficient in so many different areas. Before, you just had to have a feel for baseball operations. When I first started, most guys had their expertise in player development and scouting, and that was it. Now you have to deal with so much more."

Although old-school exceptions such as Gillick, Cincinnati's Walt Jocketty, Milwaukee's Doug Melvin and the Cubs' Jim Hendry can be found and are prospering, it is undeniable that general managers are getting more youthful and better educated. More than one of the new wave of Ivy Leaguers has been impishly dubbed "Doogie Howser, GM."

Fewer of the new breed played professionally (just two current GMs — Oakland's Billy Beane and the White Sox's Kenny Williams — were major-leaguers), and a mastery of statistical analysis has become de rigueur.

Indeed, the "Moneyball" argument that raged just five years ago with the publication of Michael Lewis' landmark examination of the Oakland A's and their trendsetting GM, Beane, has already become passé.

No longer is it a question of "stats vs. scouts." No organization would dare operate without at least dabbling in sabermetric analysis and trying at some level to exploit market inefficiencies that were the A's lifeblood.

"I would be surprised if any organization doesn't do both," said Dombrowski, referring to the statistics versus scouts dichotomy. "Now it's a matter of how you emphasize one versus the other."

Of course, some old-timers feel the need to point out that sabermetrics wasn't just dropped upon baseball in the last decade.

"It's not like no one used statistical analysis before this new wave, and then all of a sudden everyone was scrambling to embrace it," said Gerry Hunsicker, the Rays' vice president of baseball operations since 2005 after a successful nine-year stint as GM of the Houston Astros.

"A lot of stat analysis was used; you just didn't hear a lot about it," Hunsicker added. "Sandy Alderson [Beane's predecessor in Oakland] is a good example. I kind of chuckled when this really picked up a head of steam six or eight years ago. We used these so-called new formulas for years; we just didn't call attention to it. I guess it wasn't fashionable 10 to 15 years ago."

Still, the level of sophistication of sabermetrics has undeniably advanced, as have the stakes involved in player acquisition in the era of the $100 million-plus payroll.

"Fifteen to 20 years ago, you made a mistake and it cost you 25 or 50,000 [dollars]," Hunsicker said. "Today's it's millions."

The trend toward youth began in the '90s with the hiring of 31-year old Jim Bowden by Cincinnati in 1992 and 29-year-old Randy Smith by the Padres in 1993, followed by Brian Cashman taking over the Yankees at age 30 in 1998 and Mark Shapiro assuming control of the Indians at age 34 in '01.

The latest wave of pointy-headed young talent, besides Friedman and Epstein, includes Texas' Jon Daniels, a Cornell grad hired at age 28, and Arizona's Josh Byrnes, a grad of Haverford College in Pennsylvania who was hired at age 35. Williams has a Stanford education, Florida GM Michael Hill is a Harvard grad and Shapiro went to Princeton.

That doesn't include innumerable Ivy League types sitting in assistant posts waiting to move up — some of whom are on the Mariners' list.

A few years ago, Padres GM Kevin Towers joked that he couldn't talk shop in the hotel bar during the winter meetings because none of his colleagues were old enough to drink. Towers, finishing his 13th year on the job, is now the senior GM in baseball in terms of consecutive service with one team.

Atlanta's John Schuerholz, who was among the dean of GMs until retiring after last season, quipped to The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2005 that at GM gatherings, he introduces himself to everyone who looks like his son's age (26) "just in case they are a GM."

Joked Schuerholz, 65 at the time: "I feel like Obi-Wan Kenobi."

Not all the young phenoms pan out, just as every No. 1 draft pick doesn't become a superstar. There's Paul DePodesta, from Harvard, who was 31 and Beane's top assistant when the Dodgers hired him as GM in 2004 — a job in which he lasted two seasons amid criticism that his résumé and intellect didn't translate well into the practical and personal aspects of running a department. He has landed nicely as one of Towers' assistants in San Diego.

Speaking in general terms, Shapiro said that all the job's qualifications pale in comparison to one overriding criterion for success as a GM: leadership.

"It's not just picking 25 players; it's leading an organization," he said. "There may have been some overreaction to the analytical skills over the past few years, but it's important to have some sophistication and understanding of the business complexities and the high financial stakes for the owner."

Colorado GM Dan O'Dowd, also not speaking of any specific person, warned that the influx of youth "can create a false illusion of what the job represents."

He added, "I believe that experience is the best teacher. You think you know things, but when you experience those things, it's completely different. I learned that; I learned it's a lot easier as an assistant."

O'Dowd, himself a protégé of former Cleveland GM John Hart, was instrumental, along with Hart, in facilitating the influx of many of today's young GMs. Shapiro, Byrnes and DePodesta all came through Cleveland, as did Pittsburgh GM Neal Huntington.

"One thing we did in Cleveland back then — we realized there was a need in the game for very young, highly motivated, very passionate people with intellectual intelligence," O'Dowd said. "There are two types of intelligence — instinctive and intellectual. For years in baseball, there was tons of instinctive intelligence. We felt there was a huge lack of intellectual capability in the game.

"You can see the legacy they've spawned."

And that legacy will be something the Mariners might tap into as they plot their future.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com