01:00 AM EST on Thursday, November 17, 2005

BOSTON -- Principal owner John Henry and team president and CEO Larry Lucchino are attending owner's meetings in Milwaukee, temporariliy putting the team's search for a new general manager on hold.

Then again, not much progress has been made to date. More than two weeks after Theo Epstein walked away from the Red Sox, the team is no closer to hiring his replacement.

A look at recent developments, and where the Red Sox go from here.

To date, a number of qualified candidates (Chris Antonetti and Tony LaCava) have turned down an opportunity to interview for the position, while another (Dayton Moore) pulled out in the middle of the process.

That says something about the desirability of the position.

"This isn't as attractive as some people believe," said a major league executive yesterday. "There are more people running away from the job than running for it."

Undoubtedly, Lucchino's looming presence is a big reason why. Remember, Billy Beane turned down the Red Sox in part because of his fear of Lucchino's input. So, too, did Toronto's J.P. Ricciardi.

Now, a 30-year-old rising star like Antonetti declines an interview, just a week after willingly enduring a six-hour interview for the same post with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Perhaps Lucchino has been unfairly maligned in some baseball circles. But in the aftermath of the Epstein fiasco, the perception is that working for the Red Sox is a decidedly mixed blessing.

This shouldn't be the case, of course. The Sox have history, tradition, a fanatical following, resources second only to the Yankees and a rebuilt farm system.

Still, people are leery. It's worth noting three of the four candidates interviewed to date are either facing unemployment (Jim Bowden, who will be out of a job when the Washington franchise is sold), currently unemployed (Jim Beattie) or at an age when GM opportunities are not plentiful (the 50-year-old Wayne Krivsky).

The longer the Sox go without hiring a general manager -- the winter meetings are just 12 days away -- the more talk will focus on some in-house candidates.

There's been a suggestion by some that adviser Bill Lajoie -- himself, a former GM -- could take over on an interim basis. But at 71 with a cancer scare recently behind him, Lajoie said yesterday he probably doesn't have the physical energy to do a job that he readily admits is twice as demanding as it was 20 years ago.

That leaves the Young Bucks -- Jed Hoyer, Peter Woodfork, Craig Shipley and Ben Cherington -- who represented the Red Sox at the general managers meetings in California last week.

Epstein was hired late in the off-season in 2002 when the Sox couldn't lure a more established candidate. Could history repeat itself here?

Choosing one of the four -- Cherington or Hoyer would be the most logical choices -- would provide continuity for the organizatrion. The two are familiar with Red Sox personnel and could help ease the the transition from Epstein's departure.

Eventually, the successful candidate will have to satisfy both Henry and Lucchino, each of whom is seeking different qualities.

Lucchino is looking for someone whom he can mold and who has talent evaluation skills, as both Kevin Towers (in San Diego) and Epstein (in Boston) did.

Henry, on the other hand, wants the new GM to at least be open to the tools of statistical analysis and sabermetrics. The longer Henry is involved in the game, the more he comes to believe that a stats-based, scientific approach to player evaluation is essential to a club's success.

Projecting future performance, after all, is how Henry made his many million in the business world.

In Epstein, the Red Sox had the rare executive who could balance old school (relying on Lajoie, a scout's scout) and new (incorporating the work of Bill James). Finding another, as the Red Sox are no doubt realizing, won't be simple.