SB Nation Managers of the Year

As you can see the AL winner was Joe Maddon....big surprise eh? The top three were the three I voted for in the order I voted so I can't really complain. The one first place vote for Ozzie Guillen is the vote that interests me. I'd like to hear the rational for that one. Also the one vote for Trey Hillman for managing the Royals to their 75 and 87 record is interesting. And no I can't explain why, if each AL site got two votes, there are only 17 votes in all. But I just write here.

Cito got three third place votes. I'll admit I thought about voting for Cito. The Jays did improve after Cito took over. The debate is: how much of that was due to Cito and how much of that luck evening out some. The Jays under Gibby didn't come close to their pythagorean record. Some of the team's improval under Cito had to do with getting Lind into the lineup and sitting Wilk. Wilkerson was awful, but Gibby played him everyday. Cito's best move was taking out of the everyday lineup.

Cito has never and will never be one of the great 'in game' managers. His best quality as a manager is his way of making players feel like they are important to the team, when a player gains his trust he's in the lineup. I'm sure it is great for a player to feel that faith from your manager. Of course there is a flip side to that, if a manager has faith in the players he has in the lineup the other guys can clearly tell he has no faith in them. So by showing faith in Barajas, he shows he doesn't like Zaun.

Barajas at times last season was terrific.....and at other times was terrible. Cito decided Rod was his guy and not only played him every day but put him in the middle of the lineup. I'm sure this was a great feeling for Barajas. But....a) he really didn't deserve to be in the middle of the lineup and b) it couldn't have helped Zaun sense of self worth.

Earl Weaver said that a manager will have 5 players that love him and 5 players that hate him. The secret to managing is to keep the 5 that hate you away from the 15 that are sitting on the fence. Cito's value as a manager is picking the right guys and helping them find their potential.

As an in game manager, he tends to leave pitchers out on the mound too long. He's a very slow hook. When Marcum came back from his first injury, we were told he he was on a hard and fast pitch limit. And then Cito left him in 20 pitches beyond that limit. Now there is no way of knowing if overuse caused his injury and his need for Tommy John Surgery, but I'm sure it didn't help.

Offensively he's makes most of the standard moves, doesn't pinch hit much and bunts too often for my liking. This season he seemed to pick players he didn't like and had them bunt at every opportunity.

Anyway even though I didn't vote for him, he deserves some notice for the job he did this season. I'm glad he got votes.

I didn't pay enough attention to the NL to have an strong opinion on the NL vote, though the one vote for Manny Acta and the two votes for Dale Sveum are interesting. Sveum only lead his team for a couple of weeks. It is strange that he gets votes and the man fired so he could have a job (Ned Yost) got votes. Acta....well he led the Nationals to a last place finish and lost 102 games. Voting for him as manager of the year must have been a joke of some sort. Now I'm sure there isn't a manager anywhere that could have turned the Nationals into a winning team but....102 loses?  Oh well, and we mock the baseball writers awards.

Anyway, as always,  your comments are welcome.