Duquette

The Orioles have every right to bask in the glow of a highly competitive and entertaining 2012 season that exceeded all expectation, but it's impossible to look back on their six-game playoff run without wondering what might have been - and what might be - if they had just a little more offensive potential. The five-game American League Division Series was one of the lowest scoring in the history of that format, so it wasn't like the New York Yankees were tearing the cover off the ball either.

NEW YORK -- Orioles executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette spoke with reporters in the Orioles clubhouse following the team's season-ending American League Division Series Game 5 loss to the Yankees at Yankee Stadium: How satisfied are you with this season? I'm proud of the effort of the whole organization. We took some great strides forward. We're a first-division outfit. To win 96 games is really an accomplishment and I'm proud of the work and effort that everyone did. Obviously we're disappointed in today's game.

In my first meeting with Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette back in January, he talked about appreciating Baltimore's rich baseball history and realizing that fans in this city were hungry for a winner. He talked about learning from the legendary Harry Dalton, who built the Orioles' dynasty teams from 1966 to '71. Duquette's first major league job was working under Dalton in Milwaukee. So Duquette could appreciate the excitement of Sunday's first postseason game in Baltimore in 15 years.

The opening scene of the movie "Moneyball" is a grainy close-up of Johnny Damon batting for the Oakland Athletics. Damon becomes the movie's pivotal point, a primary example of a player paid more than stats say he is worth. That surprised Loyola University Maryland economics professor Stephen Walters. He used the sort of advanced statistical analysis championed by the film and the book that inspired it to advise then-Boston Red Sox general manager, Dan Duquette, that signing Damon in fact made a great deal of financial sense.

On July 28, the Orioles lost to the Oakland Athletics to drop their record to 52-49. As pleasant a surprise as the club had been to that point, the season suddenly carried all the hallmarks of an Oriole collapse, the kind fans had come to expect in 14 straight years of losing. The Orioles had given up far more runs than they had scored. The defense was suspect. Injuries had frayed an already patched-together roster. But executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette and manager Buck Showalter did not simply watch the train derail.

Buck Showalter and Dan Duquette talked briefly with the media Sunday night in a conference call from Florida after the Orioles' charter plane - which had to make an emergency stop in Jacksonville because of smoke in the kitchen area - landed. Showalter talked about that experience, and both men spoke about the Orioles clinching a playoff berth for the first time in 15 years. The team learned of the Los Angeles Angels' loss while in the air. Showalter on the plane mishap: “I didn't get my coffee so I am a little ornery.

Witnessed an interesting moment in the Orioles' media lunch room in the middle of Monday's second game. Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette walked in and Toronto assistant GM Tony LaCava was already in the room. LaCava, as you may remember, was offered the Orioles GM job last offseason and turned it down. So the Orioles went back to the drawing board, interviewed a few more candidates and ended up with Duquette. There were a lot of theories as to why LaCava turned it down, but his response was that he really liked what was going on in Toronto and wanted to stay.

Dan Duquette said the decision to bring up 19-year-old pitching phenom Dylan Bundy to help a bullpen depleted by an 18-inning marathon in Seattle on Tuesday was pretty simple. “We needed a pitcher for tonight, he worked all his life to be a big leaguer, he is on our [40-man] roster,” Duquette, the club's executive vice president, said. “So we thought this was a good opportunity.” Bundy, the fourth overall pick in last year's amateur draft, will be placed in the bullpen for now - an old school move that managers like Hall of Famer Earl Weaver adhered to when dealing with young up-and-coming pitchers like Jim Palmer and Mike Boddicker.

In the 10 months or so that executive vice president Dan Duquette has been on the job, there's been a couple areas he has stressed more than anything else. One is that he wanted to discover undervalued assets. Acquire players that can help the team win but weren't getting an opportunity for one reason or another. Consider that goal met with the contributions of Nate McLouth, Lew Ford, Miguel Gonzalez and Randy Wolf, among others. His other talking point for much of his brief tenure has been the need to find hitters who can get on base at a high clip.

SEATTLE - Orioles executive vice president Dan Duquette never revealed his specific expectations for the season when it began in April. But now his immediate goal is clear. And it's not winning an American League wild-card spot. "We're in a position now that we have the kind of ballclub that we could win the division," Duquette said Tuesday. "We have an opportunity to win the division, that's like advancing a round in the playoffs. " Heading into Tuesday night's game in Seattle, the Orioles held the second AL wild-card post but were also just a half-game behind the New York Yankees in the AL East race.