The BBWAA presents the Manager of the Year Award Tuesday night, and you can watch the reveal on MLB TV. The three finalists in the National League are Terry Collins, Joe Maddon, and Mike Matheny. Jeff Bannister, A.J. Hinch, and Paul Molitor look to take home the award in the American League. Maddon, Bannister, Hinch, and Molitor all took on new teams this year, Bannister and Molitor managing for the first time in the majors.
Often times the award goes to a manager whose team either blows away the rest of the league, or performs above pre-season expectations. Bannister, Hinch, and Molitor all fall into the latter category, and Maddon probably does as well. The Mets expected to win going into the regular season, although the pundits didn’t agree as much. The Cardinals were simply the best team in the majors during the regular season.
I would not vote for Collins first. The Mets success seemed to hinge more on front office moves at the trade deadline than Collins getting the most out of his players. That’s not a criticism of Collins; the fact that so many Mets players wanted to stay in New York at the trade deadline indicates that they want to play for the man.
There is a real strategy argument that can be made between Maddon and Matheny. Joe Maddon batted his pitcher eighth 140 times in 2015, Matheny never did (Collins used that strategy 25 times). Maddon constantly moved his players around the field trying to maximize production. Matheny tried to move Matt Carpenter around the lineup, only to find Carpenter didn’t respond well. Matheny got a lot out of a pitching staff where the best veteran pitchers spent a great deal of time on the disabled list, and one young one pitched through an injury. Toss a coin, but I think that the pre-season expectations of the Cubs, plus Maddon’s active strategy gives the award to him. I would vote Maddon, Matheny, Collins. There is no bad choice here.
The AL is tough call. The Rangers were devastated by injuries, but won the AL West. The Astros were a laughing stock two years ago, and led the AL West most of the season. I thought the Twins would be terrible going into 2015, and they played extremely well most of the year.
I like that Molitor used the pitcher batting eighth strategy five times. Two other AL managers used it once each. Hinch did a nice job of mixing his veterans and youngsters, and executed the pitch well and hit home run strategy well. Bannister got lucky that Prince Fielder could hit again. Texas was a little too aggressive stealing. While their SB% was above average, they led the league in getting picked off.
In thinking about it, I suspect Ned Yost really should be first. These three are very even, and I’d probably vote Hinch, Molitor, Bannister.
I think that Collins has a problem recognizing when to get his pitchers out of the game and generally is a by the book guy, but I must commend him for keeping the Mets from imploding as they went through July with little offense. In his tenure there has been very little drama that has made it out of the clubhouse. The players seem to like playing for him, and it will be interesting how this year plays out. A tough choice in the NL. In the AL I think Banister should get it, kept them close when the injuries struck and held on to the lead when they got it. Of course the other candidates are well deserving. as you said, all choices are good ones.
Collins is not an especially good in-game tactician in some ways, but he’s excellent at handling his lineup. I saw the light the day Nieuwenhuis hit three homers in one game. It’s not just that Collins played him that game, it’s that he hit him cleanup. My gut reaction on seeing Nieuwenhuis batting fourth was that it was insane, but obviously Collins was looking at the matchup stats and not only saw something that made him play Kirk that day, he trusted the numbers enough to maximize them in the four slot. Collins also saw or had pointed out to him how great a pitch-framer Plawecki is and stuck with him while d’Arnaud was out rather being seduced by the greater power potential of Recker.
Of course it was the trades (mostly Cespedes, to a lesser degree Reed and Clippard; Uribe just filled in at 3B until Wright got back, and Johnson was only a utilityman) that enabled the Mets to cruise to the division title, but those trades wouldn’t have been made if Collins hadn’t done an absolutely masterful job of keeping the Mets in contention despite major setbacks: losing Wright in game 8, d’Arnaud’s broken wrist, Blevins breaking his arm twice, losing their closer to suspension, Cuddyer massively underperforming and then also going on the DL.
Yes, the Mets’ pitching had a lot to do with that, but there have been so many Mets teams where the pitchers felt it was all on them and cracked under the pressure. Even though the Mets’ lineup in June and most of July was the most pathetically weak lineup I’ve seen them field, ever, and I’ve been a fan my whole life (since Opening Day 1969, when I was eight years old), somehow Collins managed the clubhouse well enough that nobody cracked. And then when the Harvey innings-limit situation surfaced, he managed that too.
Neither of the other NL candidates faced so much adversity and overcame it so well.
That mess with Harvey ends any Collins discussion for me. A good manager nips that in the bud and works something out w/o it all going public like that, and he threw Harvey under the bus a few times. He had the easiest schedule in baseball to work with and the FO plugged the holes at the deadline. I think they won despite him.
Maddon all the way IMO.
AL is a tough call. Astros kind of failed in the 2nd half despite the addition of Correa , Gomez and Kazmir and Texas was helped at the deadline with Hamels and getting healthy at the end, with good bounce back years from Prince and Choo. The Twins were more of a surprise to me. I don’t really see how that team competed as well as it did. I go with Molitor