2012 Awards Season: Managers

The first NL Manager of the Year winner: Tommy LaSorda

The playing part of the 2012 season is now over and congratulations are in order to the Giants. We now begin the second part of the season, the awards and honors section. This part of the season lasts until January and includes all the postseason awards plus the two Hall of Fame votes. I’m going to take some time to voice my opinion on the awards by letting readers know both who I think will win and who I think should win. Frequently those aren’t the same people. I start with the Managers. Let me remind you that all awards voting is done before the playoffs begin so nothing that happens in the playoffs can affect the awards.

AL–I presume Buck Showalter will win. The Orioles hadn’t won in the 21st Century, lost one of their best players (Nick Markakis), battled the Yankees with their overwhelming salary advantage, and made the playoffs as a  wildcard team. That’s worthy of Manager of the Year in the American League. But let me remind you about Oakland and Bob Melvin. The Athletics last made the playoffs in 2006, then wandered through a wasteland with one semi-winning  season (2010 when they finished at exactly .500). They hired Melvin with about 100 games left (actually 99) in 2011 and this year they won the AL West. In doing so they put up the second best record in the AL (one game better than Baltimore, one game less than New York. They also had to take on the reigning AL champion (Texas) and won the head-to-head matchup that propelled them to the division title (remember Baltimore won a wild card, not a division). I think Showalter will win, but I wouldn’t be upset if Melvin (my choice) won the award.

NL–I presume this is Davey Johnson’s award. He took a team that had never won a thing, led it to the best record in baseball, had to put up with the Strasburg circus, and still found a way to win. Certainly nothing wrong with those credentials and ultimately I’d probably vote for him, but take a look at the following candidates. Bruce Bochy saw his ace, a two-time Cy Young winner, fall apart, replaced him with pitchers who were over the hill (Zito), or had twenty total wins going into the season (Bumgarner), or whose claim to fame was that he was pretty good in Japan (Vogelsong) and had only one decent year in the US. Then he has a team that finishes dead last in power (only two players available for the Series had double figure home runs). Finally, his best player and All Star game MVP (Cabrera) is banned for 50 games. The result of all this is a first place finish. Also take a look at Mike Matheny. I know he manages the reigning World Champions, but it’s not the same team as last season. Three quarters of his infield  is new. Pujols is gone replaced by Craig who isn’t a first baseman, Furcal goes down and is replaced by a rookie, Descalso has moved from third to second (but at least is still in the infield), Craig is on outfielder moved to third. That’s messing with half the starters. Top that off with losing his ace (Carpenter) and still the Cards made the playoffs. Not bad for a rookie manager.

I think that Showalter and Johnson will win and if they do they won’t be bad choices, but don’t forget the others. They deserve a lot of  credit for the success of their team.

Picking the Winners: Managers

The final of my thoughts on the next round of postseason MLB awards. I’ve said before that I have little idea how to evaluate managers, so this post is more in the nature of who I think should win rather than who I think will win. As to the latter, I have no idea.

NL-Bud Black. I think deep down inside that Dusty Baker will probably win this or maybe it will be Bobby Cox or yet again Bruce Bochy. All of them led their team in the playoffs and that’s generally rewarded. Baker took a team that wasn’t supposed to win and took down the favored Cardinals. For Cox it was his last season and he got the Braves to the wildcard. Sentiment alone might get him the award. Bochy took a team that didn’t hit a lot, but pitched well and won the division on the final day of the season (remember the voting is done before the playoffs begin so the writers don’t know Bochy’s team is going to win the World  Series). As I said, Bochy won on the last day of the season. He did it by beating the Padres, Bud Black’s team. The Padres were picked dead last in an already weak division. With good pitching, decent enough hitting to win close games, and a reasonably decent defense, the Padres took it to the last day. Baring that horrendous 10 game losing streak, they would have won the west. The manager of the Padres, Bud Black, gets my vote for the manager of the year. He had almost nothing to work with and came within an ace of knocking off the pitching rich Giants. He’d get my vote, but if pressed to pick who I think the writers will choose, I guess I’d go with Baker.

AL-Terry Francona. He has no chance, but you have to give him credit for the Red Sox successess this season. Do you know how many of the Red Sox first line everyday players played at least 130 or more games? Exactly four (Marco Scutero, Adrian Beltre, JD Drew, and David Ortiz). That means that half the team was out of the lineup for long periods of time and they still ended up 89-73. Only Drew started more than 50 games in the same outfield position (McDonald and Hall started 50, but not in the same position). A manager has to get some credit for keeping a team like that in contention until late in the season. Only Jon Lester and John Lackey started 30 or more games. Try winning with 60% of your starters getting into less than 30 games. Frankly, as I stated earlier, I don’t think Francona has a chance of winning, but he probably should. Francona is using mirrors and sitll winning. Not bad. And speaking of mirrors, the other guy I’d look at seriously is Buck Showalter. He was there a third of a season in Baltimore and that will surely hurt him. But he won with that team; something no one’s done for a long, long time. I keep asking myslef, “Did he really win with those guys?” Again, if pressed, I’d probably say the writers will pick Joe Maddon, but I wouldn’t. I’d also love to see Ron Gardenhire finally get the credit he deserves.