Every year the bloggers and members of the SBN baseball blog community get together and do our own BWAA-style voting for all of the major awards. I didn't have much time to do the proper research for it this year, so I put it out to the Talking Chop community to get a couple of members who wanted to vote. Talking Chop commenters esadb and Doghnut submitted ballots on behalf of the site and Braves fans. Hopefully they will let us know who they voted for. Here are the overall results for the NL:
Rk | Manager | Team | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Pts |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Jim Tracy | Colorado Rockies | 24 | 1 | 2 | 125 |
2 | Tony LaRussa | St. Louis Cardinals | 3 | 7 | 10 | 46 |
3 | Fredi Gonzalez | Florida Marlins | 2 | 6 | 5 | 33 |
4 | Joe Torre | Los Angeles Dodgers | - | 9 | 2 | 29 |
5 | Charlie Manuel | Philadelphia Phillies | - | 3 | 5 | 14 |
6 | Bruce Bochy | San Francisco Giants | 1 | 1 | 1 | 9 |
7 | Bobby Cox | Atlanta Braves | - | 1 | 4 | 7 |
8 | Bud Black | San Diego Padres | - | 1 | 1 | 4 |
9 | John Russell | Pittsburgh Pirates | - | 1 | - | 3 |
I don't think very much of Jim Tracy so there's no way in hell I would have voted for him. I know the Rockies turned around when he took over, but really... was it really him? Or was it simply removing the ineffective and toxic Clint Hurdle, where anyone who replaced him would have gotten the same level of play out of that team. I'm just not a Jim Tracy fan.
Overall I don't know how one can really say that a manager had that much of an influence on a team, and more specifically, how one can say that a manager of a team you don't watch every day had this influence of that influence. I can have a better guess about Bobby Cox' influence on the Braves, but I have zero insight into the betterments of these other teams because of their respective managers. Only that I don't like Jim Tracy, nor think he deserves this award. /soapbox
FYI, in the AL Scioscia was first and Gardenhire was second in a very close vote. The AL results are after the jump.
Rk | Manager | Team | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Pts |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Mike Scioscia | Los Angeles Angels | 9 | 8 | 3 | 72 |
2 | Ron Gardenhire | Minnesota Twins | 9 | 5 | 1 | 61 |
3 | Don Wakamatsu | Seattle Mariners | 6 | 3 | 8 | 47 |
4 | Joe Girardi | New York Yankees | 2 | 4 | 2 | 24 |
5 | Ron Washington | Texas Rangers | 1 | 4 | 4 | 21 |
6 | Terry Francona | Boston Red Sox | 1 | 1 | 3 | 11 |
7 | Jim Leyland | Detroit Tigers | - | 2 | 4 | 10 |
8 | Joe Maddon | Tampa Bay Rays | - | 1 | 1 | 4 |
9 | Ozzie Guillen | Chicago White Sox | - | - | 1 | 1 |
10 | Trey Hillman | Kansas City Royals | - | - | 1 | 1 |