Manager of the Year

It’s October which means, among other things, time to give end of year awards in Major League Baseball. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America doesn’t announce its winners until November, but we here at Fansided are on our game and we already know who we like. The votes have been counted and the Fansided winner has been revealed at Call to the Pen. I’m the chosen Rox Pile representative for the Manager of the Year Award, which means I have to justify my choices …

I gave my first place vote to Kirk Gibson of the Arizona Diamondbacks. To be perfectly honest, he’s the only one I thought was deserving of the award. I’m sure others will argue with me on that, but in my opinion, what he did with his team this season was head and shoulders above what any other manager did. The D-backs are a worst-to-first story if I ever heard one, and they have fought all the way through the NLDS. They were without question the least talented team in the postseason, but they played like they didn’t know that. That’s all on Gibby. Dare I say? The next generation may not know him as the man who hit a home run in the World Series and hobbled around the bases pumping his fist. They might know him instead as the man who finally made the Diamondbacks relevant.

My second-place vote went to Clint Hurdle of the Pittsburgh Pirates. This vote is a tiny bit sentimental, but no less deserved. Watching the Pirates in the first half of the season was very like watching the Rockies in the second half of 2007. And after watching the second half of 2011 mismanaged by Jim Tracy, I missed Papa Clint badly. He has a gift for shepherding teams like the Bucs, young and a bit shapeless, but talented and ripe for good leadership. They faltered some in the second half, but in spite of that, I don’t doubt Hurdle’s skills in the least.

My third-place vote went to Terry Collins of the New York Mets. You will notice that he only received one vote, which means I’m the only one who thought he was deserving. But here’s the thing people: anybody could have managed the Brewers or the Phillies to success. Even you, even me. Collins, though, took on a much more difficult task. He’s a brave man simply for attempting to manage a New York team, but he has guts and intensity to spare. The Mets went through a lot of changes this season, in part thanks to a new front office that wasted no time making things happen, and Collins did the Mets a solid by navigating them through it. The NL East is an almost impossible division to win right now if you aren’t the Phillies; the Mets’ chances increased measurably when they put Collins at the helm.