End of Season Awards: Manager of the Year (NL)

by Daniel Gettinger

A few months ago, I joined a loose coalition called The Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA).  According to its website, the BBA was “created to foster communication and collaboration between bloggers across baseball.  Member blogs are encouraged to use one another to deepen their understanding of the game and the teams that play it.”  In addition, the BBA produces year-end awards.  The BBA is broken into chapters, consisting of bloggers from each team.  Each chapter receives two votes.

The San Diego Padres chapter, which also includes Peter Friberg (Padres Rundown), The Sacrifice Bunt (Melvin Nieves and Ray Lankford), Websoulsurfer, and Avenging Jack Murphy, decided rather than allowing only two members to vote, to aggregate our votes and issue one “Padres chapter” ballot worth two votes.  For Manager of the year, the chapter voted in the following manner:

1) Jim Tracy-Colorado

2) Tony LaRussa-St. Louis

3) Joe Torre-Los Angeles

Each member voted as follows (if they provided explanations, those are listed as well):

Daniel Gettinger: Tony LaRussa (1), Joe Torre (2), Bobby Cox (3)

Honestly, I do not really know the best way to evaluate managers.  I considered abstaining from this category, but instead elected to just go with a few managers whose teams did a bit better than I thought they would.

The Sacrifice Bunt (Ray Lankford): Jim Tracy, Fredi Gonzalez, Budford vonBlackenstein (Bud Black)

Websoulsurfer:

1) Jim Tracy-Took over an 18-28 team and got them to play some of the best baseball in the NL from that point on and win the Wild Card

2) Tony LaRussa-LaRussa once again took a team that was projected to be middle of the pack and with the addition of 1 player is in the playoffs.

3) Bud Black-For Not Losing 100 with this group.

Peter Friberg: Jim Tracy, Joe Torre, Fredi Gonzalez

Avenging Jack Murphy-Jim Tracy, Joe Torre, Tony LaRussa

So thats all for manager of the year.  I will let you know the results of the full BBA as soon as they are released.  Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, and MVP are the other categories we voted on, and I will have posts on those as well.