Manager of the Year is one of the most arbitrary awards of all the arbitrary awards. Quite frankly, I’d like to just give the award to Buck Showalter and call it good, but we can’t do that in good conscience, can we? Instead, so we can all sleep at night, let’s take a look at the best skippers the AL has to offer.
Right off the bat, we’re going to eliminate any teams without a winning record. What we’re really looking for is a team that’s outperforming their expectations and making the most of what they’ve got. There are currently eight teams in the AL with a winning record. Immediately we can eliminate Joe Girardi. Nobody with a $200 million payroll gets Manager of the Year. Next, we can eliminate Bob Geren of the Oakland Athletics because no pets, even Billy Beane’s, are allowed. Third, we can ditch Cito Gaston because his Blue Jays aren’t much good at anything except for hitting home runs and not measuring up to the Yankees/Rays/Red Sox monster they’re cursed with. In another division maybe, but the Jays just aren’t anything special in the behemoth that is the AL East.
Now to the real contenders. That leaves six legitimate candidates for Manager of the Year: Joe Maddon of the Tampa Bay Rays, Terry Francona of the Boston Red Sox, Ron Gardenhire of the Minnesota Twins, Ozzie Guillen of the Chicago White Sox, and Ron Washington of the Texas Rangers. I think we can next whittle away by denying Joe Maddon of his second Manager of the Year Award. Unfortunately for him, the Rays now have legit expectations and you don’t win awards for meeting expectations.
As well as the Rangers have done this year, I don’t see Ron Washington walking away with a Manager of the Year Award in a year where he’s lucky to still be employed. On the other hand, maybe that’s precisely why he’d win it.
If the White Sox don’t win the Central, then Ozzie’s out, and even if they do, it’s still no sure thing, although a White Sox winning streak would probably also coincide with a highly publicized Manny hot-streak that could only work in Ozzie’s favor.
The surest contenders and probably the most deserving of the award are managing veterans Ron Gardenhire and Terry Francona. If the Twins win the Central, Gardenhire will win the award for, surprisingly, the first time. In a season where the Twins lost Justin Morneau for a good chunk of time, Joe Mauer had a down year, and have been without Joe Nathan all season, Ron Gardenhire has kept his club along their all-too-familiar path of surprising contending consistency. For that, and for all his past work, Gardenhire deserves a Manager of the Year Award.
But not this year. This year, the award should go to Terry Francona of the Boston Red Sox. The Sox have had a down year, no doubt about it, but let’s put it in perspective. If the Sox were moved to the Central today, they’d be two games back. If they were in the West, they’d be a half a game up on the surprising Rangers.
But they aren’t. Instead, Francona and his club are mired in the East where they’re a distant third and all-but-eliminated from playoff contention. But Francona’s election would not be unprecedented. His AL East foe, Joe Girardi, won the award as a rookie manager in 2006 for the Marlins, finishing under .500.
It is entirely possible that the Red Sox will finish the year as the third-best team in the league in a season where they’ve had to deal with injury problems the likes of which haven’t been dealt with by any other team in either league. And through it all, Terry Francona has been the class act that he’s always been while keeping his team on an even keel. Even though they may not be the best team in the league, it’s clear that the Red Sox, this year at least, have the best manager in the league in Terry Francona.
I don’t see how it could be anybody other than Gardenhire, especially considering he’s never won it. Francona has certainly been without some key players…but zero out those players and the Red Sox payroll is still 150% of what the Twins spent. And it gets more ridiculous if you take away Morneau and Nathan from the Twins. Gardenhire does more with less.
What??? I mean, just… what? You eliminate Joe Girardi off the bat for having a 200 million dollar salary, but Francona’s 160 million qualifies as “doing more with less”? So basically, you think that the manager of the team with the second highest payroll, who never managed to be better than second in their division for over a week, deserves manager of the year? Your own espoused criteria were overall success and lack of resources to do so, and Francona completely fails on both fronts.
It should be Maddon or Gardenhire. Maddon, for making a Juggernaut of a team out of less than 80 million, or Gardenhire, for turning the Twins into a perennial contender for the AL Central TItle.
More than half of the text you provide supporting this election are explanations of why the Red Sox didn’t win more… tough division, injuries, etc. Don’t managers decide how often to play their guys? How often to put them at risk of injury? How hard to push them? If Terry broke his team, then how does overcoming that “adversity” make a great manager?
Joe Maddon fights every game for his team. He’s handled arguably some of the worst officiating this season (Jeter’s HBP, for an egregious recent example) and fired up his young team and led them to victory. Maddon did what Francona does, but with younger guys with less money. THAT takes skill, class, and dedication. A repeat would not be unprecedented either… Torre and Scioscia are both multiple winners. While everyone expected the Rays to be good this season, that’s only because for two years prior Joe continued to “do more with less” until the country took notice.
Francona… really? Or was this some kind of elaborate joke that I didn’t get? If so I feel stupid and I apologize for wasting your time.
Not a joke, don’t worry. Yeah he had $160 million spent, but how much of it was spent on players actually playing? Red Sox players to miss significant time in no particular order (2010 salary): Pedroia ($3.75 million), Ellsbury (only $496,000, but a starter nonetheless), Youkilis ($9.375 million), Cameron ($7.75 million), Varitek ($3 million), Lowell ($12.5 million), Matsuzaka ($8.3 million), Beckett ($12.1 million), Tazawa ($1.1 million). That’s just missing 30 days or more of the season, not including the negligable financial loss of Jed Lowrie, the perpetually injured J.D. Drew, or any single 15-day-DL stints of which there were many.
Total salary of significantly injured players: over $58 million.
But the money has nothing to do with it, it’s what the money buys. $160 million buys a lot of talent (so does $58 million, just look above), but losing a third of it loses you a lot of talent. That’s why Francona deserves the award (although I also said that Gardenhire is deserving). Francona dealt with a bigger disparity between what his starting lineup was supposed to look like and what it ended up being than any other manager in the league, and kept his team only a game back of the Rangers, while having to play the AL East all season which features only one team without a winning record, the Orioles, who have been the best team in the East since Showalter took over.
So no, no joke. Although Maddon has done “more with less,” he really hasn’t. He’s done more with what he’s got, but being paid less doesn’t make them any more talented. When Carlos Pena leaves next season and gets a big contract, that won’t make him any more talented, just higher-paid. But Maddon’s still got $100 million dollar guys on his team. Just ask Carl Crawford. That’s not to diminish his achievements, he’s done a wonderful job, but this year is not his finest hour.
And that also means that just because Francona is stuck in the toughest division in baseball and he made the foolish mistake of playing his best players often he shouldn’t be blamed for it. He is deserving of the award because of how he dealt with the loss of those players and how he kept his team not only competitive, but by their record, elite. Which manager had to do more to get his team to where they’re at right now: Gardenhire or Francona? It’s a good discussion, and of course there are valid arguments for both. My scale tips in Francona’s favor. But you don’t have to measure it that way.
Let’s see the Jays were supposed to lose 100 games but are looking like they are going to finish within 3-4 games of Boston and way over .500. Now tell me why Francona gets this over Gaston?