2007 SBN Baseball Awards: Managers of the Year

by Eric Simon on Nov 6, 2007 9:48 PM EST in Awards

Every year, SBN conducts an internal vote among our baseball bloggers to determine the results of MLB's annual awards. Our votes don't really count, but it's a neat exercise to see if we can do a better job of picking the winners than the real voters whose actual votes we deride for being shoddy and misinformed.

I was only given a vote for the National League awards, but I will include the results of both leagues here over the coming days.

Other 2007 SBN Awards Posts

Rookies of the Year

My Ballot

Lou Piniella
Bud Black
Clint Hurdle

The Cubs improved by 19 games in the standings (15 games according to Pythagoras), so some credit for that turnaround should go to Sweet Lou. I always have a tough time picking the best managers because, quite frankly, I don't really know who they are. I watch Willie Randolph every day and I have a pretty good sense of what he is good at and what he isn't, but I don't see the rest of the league's managers with enough frequency to really know. The Cubs signed a bunch of free agents, spent a bunch of money, brough in Piniella, and won a lot more games in 2007 than in the prior year.

The Diamondbacks and Rockies each outperformed expectations, the Diamondbacks wildly so. Arizona won eleven more games than expected based on their run differential, so some portion of luck, managing and an uneven record in blowouts likely contributed to that fact.

The Rockies actually underperformed their expected record by one win, so I guess that ridiculous winning streak just wasn't good enough now, was it?

I'd like to hear what you guys think. Who would you have voted for, and what is your take on managerial evaluation?

National League	1st	2nd	3rd	Points
Bob Melvin	10	5	2	67
Charlie Manuel	3	5	4	34
Clint Hurdle	3	3	3	27
Lou Piniella	3	2	3	24
Manny Acta	1	2	3	14
Bud Black	-	3	2	11
Bobby Cox	1	-	1	6
Ned Yost	-	1	1	4
Tony LaRussa	-	-	1	1
Bruce Bochy	-	-	1	1

American League	1st	2nd	3rd	Points
Eric Wedge	16	3	-	89
Joe Torre	1	7	3	29
Mike Scioscia	2	4	6	28
Mike Hargrove	-	1	4	8
Terry Francona	-	1	3	6
Ozzie Guillen	-	1	1	4
John McLaren	-	1	-	3
Buddy Bell	-	1	-	3
Sam Perlozzo	-	-	1	1
Ron Washington	-	-	1	1

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Comments

the mannyger

My take on managerial evaluation is that managers don't really make very much difference. When a manager obviously utilizes his players wrong (as Willie did with his loony handling of the bullpen this last year) it's fair to take that into account, and when players are apparently motivated to play for them (as also with Willie) it's fair to account for that too, since there's not much real hard evidence to hold up that would trump our qualitative judgments. And we seem to like to hold managers responsible for outperforming expectations, or underperforming them, when we don't just want to point to luck.

All that said, I am shocked that Manny Acta didn't get more first-place votes in this survey, and I would put him at the top of my own ballot. Not only is he an intelligent guy with a stat-driven/empirical mindset about situational tactics (the geek argument), but the Nationals wildly overperformed all season long and should rightly have finished deep in the toilet, not fractionally above the talented-youngster-heavy Marlins and out of last place (the emotional/traditionalist argument). Manny should be a shoo-in Manager of the Year for 2007.

by anonymous on Nov 6, 2007 10:37 PM EST 0 recs

i second acta's nomination

by kendynamo on Nov 6, 2007 10:47 PM EST up 0 recs

Acta

Yea, he's the man. I must've had a brain fart when filling out the ballot; I was foolishly only looking at the top of the divisional standings.

Acta is everything I wish Willie were. *sighs*

by Eric Simon on Nov 6, 2007 11:16 PM EST up 0 recs

Mets' bullpen

I'm still trying to figure out why everyone is down on Willie's handling of the bullpen. He was given chicken shit and asked to make chicken salad. Hardly anyone was reliable. What exactly was he supposed to do/not do?

Let's Go Mets!

by twassel on Nov 7, 2007 9:43 AM EST 0 recs