Tomorrow, Boston’s Josh Beckett will take the hill against the Kansas City Royals in an entirely meaningless game. Had you told anyone anywhere in spring training that Beckett’s Red Sox would be reduced to playing out the string by the first week of September while his former team, the Florida Marlins, would be playing the most important series of their season, they would have in no way have believed you. Such are the vagaries of baseball.

While the causes of the Sox’s relative failure — and it is a relative failure, as they have a better record than every National League team save the Mets, playing much stiffer competition — are both clear and widespread. They range from injuries to everyone from newly minted Sox like Coco Crisp to warhorses like Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield to underperformance from the Cecil B. DeMille-type crew that’s passed through the back of the rotation, and no player serves as a more glaring example of that failure than Beckett. Brought in to be the ace apparent to Curt Schilling, the 26-year-old has run up a 5.11 ERA, completely imploded in key situations against the Yankees, demonstrated a fastball about 5 mph slower than was advertised to the Fenway faithful, and generally served as a human batting practice machine.

Meanwhile, the two key prospects for whom he was traded are tearing up the National League. Shortstop Hanley Ramirez is on pace to score 121 runs and knock 67 long hits; right-handed starter Anibal Sanchez just threw the season’s first no-hitter and boasts a 2.89 ERA; combined, the two will make less than a tenth of Beckett’s salary next season. Even assuming that, as I wrote earlier this week, Ramirez and Sanchez are performing beyond the most optimistic expectations, the trade looks idiotic right now. Ramirez in particular appears to be enough of a stud that if Beckett turns into Roy Halladay next year you’d still have to think about which team got the better end of things, given the money involved.

The growing ire toward Beckett and the trade that brought him to Boston is thus completely understandable, if a bit irrational — after all, even if were Beckett having a Cy Young-caliber season, all that would do is put Boston in the wild card mix. He’s not the reason the team will be golfing while the Yankees try to win yet another title.

Adding to his bad performance and what Ramirez and Sanchez have done is that the Beckett trade was one of three deals that together were supposed to lay a new foundation for the Red Sox for half a decade — Bronson Arroyo was traded for Wily Mo Pena, who’s mainly distinguished himself by displaying his legendarily bad defense on the big stage, and the Sox also acquired Coco Crisp as a replacement for Johnny Damon. Crisp got hurt and has played poorly enough to spark serious trade rumors, while Damon has had the finest offensive season of his career.

Taken together, this series of moves has taken a fair bit of the shine off the Red Sox front office’s carefully cultivated reputation as a group of savants who would really be better off making tens of millions in hedge funds or teaching Emerson to our bright young minds than dallying in the amusing but trivial world of baseball.

Here’s the question — and it’s an easier question to pose than to answer. Is this fair? After all, each deal not only looked good at the time, it was good at the time. Ramirez had not played well in the minors and had earned a reputation for indifference, and Sanchez was among a group of second-tier Sox pitching prospects, while Beckett was viewed as one of the five pitchers in the game most likely to blossom into a fullyblown ace. Arroyo had established himself as a dependable fourth starter who couldn’t get a lefty out, while Pena had established himself as, if not a complete player, one of the most fearsome young power threats in the game, a player with a real shot at developing into a 45-home run behemoth. (And, truth told, he hasn’t done much to make anyone think differently this season.)

Crisp had hit as well as Damon two years running, was six years younger, and wasn’t coming off a shoulder injury. These were not only defensible moves, they were smart moves. How harshly can you honestly criticize a team for bringing in a group of 25-year-old players who have established themselves as above-average performers with significant room to grow into stars?

When judging how a season or trade or player went wrong, it’s probably not the best idea to limit oneself to what was known at the time. At the time, trading Ernie Broglio for Lou Brock got the Cardinals’ general manager fired, it was thought so obviously a bad move. At the time, trading Jim Fregosi for Nolan Ryan looked pretty boneheaded. On down the line you can go; there comes a point where you stop making excuses and just say that mistakes were made.

Still, the Red Sox have a very good team despite a lot going wrong.They’re getting some stick now, as they have been since the Yanks beat the tar out of them last month, and they’ll get some more until they make an indisputably great move to excite their fans and their people about next year. But the 26-year-old with the big fastball taking the hill tomorrow isn’t their problem, and neither are the executives who coveted him last year. Sometimes things just don’t work out the way they should.