Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Who Manages to Win?

Before I start talking about this year's Manager of the Year candidates, let me say that I feel like such an idiot for forgetting that Noah Syndergaard was a rookie!  And that the NL Rookie of the Year voters are almost as stupid as I am.  Syndergaard finishes fourth!  Behind Matt Duffy and Jung Ho Kang?  Bryant being unanimous was a given.  But Syndergaard certainly deserved to finish ahead of both Duffy and Kang.  Maybe the voters simply forgot about him the same way I did.

Anyway, now it's time for the managers, and there are plenty of deserving candidates in both leagues.  And not just the three that are finalists.  Take John Gibbons for example.  Alex Anthropolous will be Executive of the Year, and deservedly so, for the way he rebuilt the Blue Jays during the season.  But Gibbons deserves just as much credit for Toronto's division title and run to the ALCS.  Yet he's not even a finalist for Manager of the Year!  It was that competitive this year.

Two of the three AL finalists were rookie managers, and the third was new to his team.  I guess that's what gives them the edge over Gibbons, who I'd have to assume finished fourth in the voting.  And there's really very little to separate Paul Molitor, Jeff Banister and A.J. Hinch.

Hall of Fame players don't always become good managers.  Especially in their first year on the job.  Period.  Yet that's exactly what Molitor did.  The Twins hadn't been good in a while, and nobody expected them to contend this season, either.  Yet they were in the wild card race until the second-to-last day and finished second in the AL Central behind the World Series Champion Royals (where'd Ned Yost end up in the voting, by the way?).  Minnesota came up just a bit short, though, so I can't give Molitor the nod over the managers of the two Texas teams.

I have to admit, I didn't know the name of the Rangers' manager until like the middle of September.  Yet Jeff Banister took a team that wasn't even close to the best in its own division and somehow won the AL West title.  This with an injury-riddled team that lost its best pitcher, Yu Darvish, for the season during Spring Training and didn't have an ace until a midseason trade for Cole Hamels.  Yet they managed to win 88 games and surpass both the Angels and Astros for a division crown.

Speaking of Houston, A.J. Hinch was the right guy at the right time.  It was a young team full of talent, including Cy Young finalist Dallas Keuchel and Rookie of the Year Carlos Correa, who showed up in June.  Most people thought they were at least a year away, but the Astros were ready now.  Hinch had them in first place for most of the season, then, after they fell back, held on for the second wild card before winning the Wild Card Game and taking the Royals to five in the Division Series.

There's no discounting what Houston did this season, and A.J. Hinch is one of the key reasons why they did it.  He's got to be rewarded with Manager of the Year honors.  Banister finishes a very deserving second, with Molitor in third.  That's exactly how my ballot would look, as well.

Over in the National League, I though it was Mike Matheny's award to lose at the All-Star Break.  St. Louis is good every year.  But this year, Matheny took a team that had Yadier Molina and 85 rookies and didn't just win a division title.  He won 100 games in the best division in baseball.  It was going to take a lot to overtake Matheny for NL Manager of the Year, and that's exactly what happened.

When the Cubs hired Joe Maddon away from the Rays, they knew what they were getting.  He's a mad genius, but he's also got an incredible baseball mind.  Little did anyone know he'd turn around the Cubs so dramatically and so quickly.  The Cubs won 97 games.  The Cubs!  And they're only gonna get better.  Look at what Maddon did in Tampa.  He's gonna do the same thing in Chicago.  And it started sooner than everyone thought it would.

The Cubs got all the way to the NLCS, where they were swept by the Mets and their dominant starting pitchers.  What Terry Collins did with that team was nothing short of amazing.  The Mets couldn't hit for the first four months of the season.  Yet Collins kept them within striking distance of a Nationals team that had been preordained as division champions.  Then they got some bats and took off, winning their first division title in nine years, and sending Collins to the postseason for the first time in his 1,688-game career.

Collins was the Sporting News Manager of the Year, which is voted on by the managers themselves.  But it's the media that votes for the BBWAA awards, and I think they'll probably lean towards Maddon.  Honestly, neither choice would be a bad one.  But only one can win.  My vote would go to Maddon by a hair over Collins.  Matheny gets the bronze, but in any other year, he just as easily could've been the winner.

We've got six deserving finalists for the Manager of the Year awards.  But based on where their teams were last year and where they ended up this year, the first under their leadership, I'd give a slight edge to A.J. Hinch and Joe Maddon, making both the Astros and the Cubs 2-for-2 during awards season so far.  They could both make it 3-for-3 on Wednesday when the Cy Youngs are announced, but more on that tomorrow.

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