The manager of the year is a strange award, since it usually just goes to the manager whose team most exceeds preseason expectations. And sometimes, it goes to Matt Williams. The manager who ended up winning the World Series hasn't actually won the award since Ozzie Guillen of the White Sox back in 2005.
Anyway, voting on the 2015 awards was a little tougher than normal, since we had so many surprise teams. Four of the 10 playoff teams finished under .500 in 2014, and a fifth had the longest playoff drought of any team in the majors. In the end, I think the voters made the right choices in two managers in their first seasons with their team, Jeff Banister of the Texas Rangers and Joe Maddon of the Chicago Cubs.
Banister received 17 of the 30 first-place votes in a crowded AL field in which five different managers received first-place votes. Ned Yost, who guided the Royals to the AL's best record (and then the World Series, although voting is done at the end of the regular season), couldn't even finish in the top five in this group.
Banister is a great story, a guy who got his first to chance to manage in the major leagues at age 51, which is fairly late in the game in this day and age. He's one of those baseball lifers, drafted by the Pirates back in 1986 in the 25th round, a catcher from the University of Houston. He made it the major leagues for one game and one at-bat -- he got a base hit -- and began managing in the minors in 1994, spending 29 years, all told, in the Pirates organization, eventually becoming bench coach in 2010.
But his story is even more remarkable than that. As a teenager, he had osteomyelitis, a form of cancer in which bacteria eats away at bone marrow. Doctors wanted to amputate his leg. He had eight surgeries in 18 months and the leg was saved.
Then, in his first year of junior college, he was involved in a collision at home plate that fractured vertebrae in his neck. Doctors told him he'd been confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He again beat the odds, and doctors were able to repair his spinal cord after three surgeries.
So, yeah, deciding what relief pitcher to use wasn't going to faze Banister. The Rangers' turnaround was remarkable, not just from 2014, but within the season. Staff ace Yu Darvish went down for the year in spring training, and the Rangers looked like they might be the worst team in baseball in April, during which they went 7-14. In the second half, everything came together and the Rangers went 46-28 to capture the AL West title.
Banister showed faith in young players such as Delino DeShields Jr. and Rougned Odor. The bullpen was rebuilt on the fly, with Shawn Tolleson being given the opportunity to close. Only two starters made more than 21 starts, so the rotation was in constant flux throughout the season.
Banister was quick to say, "It's an organization award for me," and that's definitely true. But the Rangers appear to have hired a baseball lifer who is going to be in Texas for a long time.
Maddon, meanwhile, becomes the seventh manager to win at least three manager of the year awards, having won previously with Tampa Bay in 2008 and 2011. He took over a young Cubs team, which improved from 73 wins to 97 and snapped a streak of five consecutive losing seasons. Four rookies played on a regular basis, he made the in-season move of switching positions for infielders Addison Russell and Starlin Castro and, like the Rangers, the Cubs surged in the second half with a 50-25 record.
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny finished second in the NL voting, capturing nine first-place votes to Maddon's 18. That's what 100 wins gets you: second place. Of course, everyone expected the Cardinals to make the playoffs, so Maddon took the award under the "underdog makes good" clause. But Matheny deserved strong consideration. Only three teams have won 100 games scoring as few runs as the Cardinals -- two dead ball era teams and the 1969 Mets -- so Matheny was constantly involved in close games in which tactical decisions have a larger impact.
I think Maddon was the right choice, however. To guide a young team, a team without the history of success of the Cardinals, to 97 wins was remarkable. Young players often get exposed during a long season; these guys got better. As Maddon said, "It's a player's game." But the Cubs have the right guy to guide those young players to what should be many years of Maddon receiving manager of the year votes.
