By Jordan Long
Major League Baseball announced their Manager of the Year awards. The winners were Terry Francona and Buck Showalter.
Francona deserves the award in the American League. His team, the Cleveland Guardians, finished the regular season at 92-70, winning the American League Central Division. This record was 12 games better than last year. In 2021, Cleveland went 80-82, missing the postseason. At least Francona was able to manage his team to the playoffs this season even though they were beaten in the American League Division Series in 5 games by the New York Yankees.
In the National League, they gave it to the wrong manager. Showalter is the Manager of the New York Mets. The Mets led the National League East Division by 10.5 games on June 1st. The 2nd place team was the Atlanta Braves. The Mets at the time had a record of 35-17 while the Atlanta Braves stood at 25-27.
The New York Mets ended up going 66-44 the rest of the way as they finished 101-61. Atlanta though got hot at the end of the year. From June 1st to the end of the season, Atlanta went 76-34. Atlanta and New York had identical 101-61 records. Atlanta, though, won the National League East division due to tie breakers. They would eventually falter in the National League Wild Card Series against the San Diego Padres, dropping the best of 3, 2 games to 1.
This was the 3rd largest blown division lead in MLB History. With that, Showalter didn’t deserve Manager of The Year in the National League since his team didn’t win their own division. In fact, they weren’t playing great baseball at the end of the season.
The Manager who should have won this is Rob Thomson. Thomson took over the Philadelphia Phillies on June 3rd. This was after the Phillies decided to move on from Joe Girardi following a 22-29 beginning to the season. At the time, the Phillies stood 5.5 games out of a Wild Card spot.
Thomson guided the team to a 65-46 record as their interim manager. Overall, Philadelphia ended with a 87-75 record, earning a spot in the postseason as the last Wild Card team in the National League. They went all the way to the World Series when Philadelphia was beaten by the Houston Astros in 6 games.
Thomson was 5th in the voting, well behind Showalter. Either way though, Thomson was the better choice. Thomson did a much better job than Showalter since the team rallied around him to not only earn a playoff spot, but advance all the way to the World Series. The voters should have taken more time to consider that even though this is a regular season award. At least Thomson won the pennant and which is all that really matters.
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