SBN Baseball Awards: Manager Of The Year

by Randy Booth on Nov 9, 2009 6:00 AM EST in SBNation Awards

Every year, us baseball bloggers at SB Nation vote for all the normal end of the year awards. Now it's time to get it started again for the 2009 season.

Every blog received two ballots for their respective league. For OTM, myself and E-Coli voted for all the American League awards. After the jump are the results for Manager of the Year for both the AL and NL

American League

Rk	Manager	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Mike Scioscia	Los Angeles Angels	9	8	3	72
2	Ron Gardenhire	Minnesota Twins	9	5	1	61
3	Don Wakamatsu	Seattle Mariners	6	3	8	47
4	Joe Girardi	New York Yankees	2	4	2	24
5	Ron Washington	Texas Rangers	1	4	4	21
6	Terry Francona	Boston Red Sox	1	1	3	11
7	Jim Leyland	Detroit Tigers	-	2	4	10
8	Joe Maddon	Tampa Bay Rays	-	1	1	4
9	Ozzie Guillen	Chicago White Sox	-	-	1	1
10	Trey Hillman	Kansas City Royals	-	-	1	1

I forget how I exactly voted, but I know that I did not give Terry Francona the nod for Manager of the Year. I also do not know how E-Coli voted, but maybe there are some real Tito lovers out there that don't actually represent Red Sox Nation.

National League

Rk	Manager	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Jim Tracy	Colorado Rockies	24	1	2	125
2	Tony LaRussa	St. Louis Cardinals	3	7	10	46
3	Fredi Gonzalez	Florida Marlins	2	6	5	33
4	Joe Torre	Los Angeles Dodgers	-	9	2	29
5	Charlie Manuel	Philadelphia Phillies	-	3	5	14
6	Bruce Bochy	San Francisco Giants	1	1	1	9
7	Bobby Cox	Atlanta Braves	-	1	4	7
8	Bud Black	San Diego Padres	-	1	1	4
9	John Russell	Pittsburgh Pirates	-	1	-	3

Unlike the AL, it was not close in NL voting for Manager of the Year. Jim Tracy just ran away with this competition. I'm surprised Bruce Bochy didn't receive more votes. I personally would have given him a top four spot at the worst.

Tomorrow I will post the results for Rookie of the Year.

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Comments

Ugh

Scioscia is a twit who had 3 or 4 guys have career years. Girardi and Washington are pretty widely regarded as awful, especially by their own fans. Wakamatsu or Gardenhire SHOULD have won easily.

by -USG- on Nov 9, 2009 10:42 AM EST reply actions

I would never vote for Girardi, there can’t be a whole of thought that goes into managing that team.

"We are not normal, We are Legends. People will tell their kids about us." - Deon Butler before Ohio State Game 2008.

by Rogue Nine on Nov 11, 2009 11:33 AM EST up reply actions

I too cannot recall exactly how I voted.

I think I gave #1 to Leyland or Gardenhire, #2 to Tito.

Managers are kind of difficult to judge. You know when your team has an awful one, because he’s panning players in the media and pouring gasoline on a clubhouse wildfire. But a good manager stays out of the media, and his clubhouse role is almost invisible. Over the course of a long season, all managers make poor decisions, but we rarely rate them objectively.*

A lot of times managers seem to get too much credit for their players’ success. Scioscia is a great example. Just last year he managed his team out of the playoffs, with the incomprehensible Aybar squeeze bunt. Yet he is routinely praised as one of baseball’s best managers. You give a scrub like me a $100 million team with a strong farm system (in a division of low-payroll and poorly run teams), and my Angels would win 95-100 games too.

All of which is to say, I don’t care much for MOY, and if we had to vote an award off the SBN Award Island, it would be the first to go.

"It's just a tiny little nick, but it hurts when I get champagne in there."
- Jason Bay, on getting spiked scoring the winning run in ALDS Game Four.

by 0157H7 on Nov 9, 2009 11:33 AM EST reply actions

Footnote

Most baseball people, whether fans or traditionalists, evaluate decisions on results. So if Tito hooks a starter who is cruising and the reliever gives up 4 runs without recording an out, the decision was bad. This is not the best way to judge decisions. You have to look at all the available data (mostly stats, some scouting, player health) and then make the decision. Going to your best reliever when the starter has thrown 100 pitches, typically tires after that workload, and is coming off a serious injury, and when the reliever has success against the batters and no issues you know of, is the right call. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

"It's just a tiny little nick, but it hurts when I get champagne in there."
- Jason Bay, on getting spiked scoring the winning run in ALDS Game Four.

by 0157H7 on Nov 9, 2009 11:51 AM EST up reply actions