On the PosCast this week — coming out Wednesday — Mike Schur and I talk about how ridiculous it is that baseball does not have a special, star-studded awards night.
Why did they give out awards in '94? No one finished an actual season of baseball, there was no stretch run, no postseason, just a wasted season in which awards were meaningless.
with buck, is the number 4 the relevant number? or is it 0, the number of championships he's won? dusty took so much shit for not winning, buck seems to take little. and i'll bet buck is the only manager ever to be fired twice by teams that won the world series the next year. he's always had the horses. anyhow, a nice night for the old guys who pay attention to the data and/but make their own decisions.
I would probably watch the show. They could invite all the top 3s, throw in the silver slugger and the gold gloves, have each player have highlight film done for the show, narrated by either a baseball guy or like Liev Schreiber or something. By the way, it seems this top 3 thing has come about in the last few years. I mean, they vote for everyone, but then they tell you who the top three are. They could have them all on stage and eliminate the third place guy like Miss America or the Masked Singer or something, and then have the second place guy up there trying to not look sad when they announce the winner.
Keep in mind, that the runner up has to fulfill the duties of the winner if he is not able to complete them, so coming in second is still something. I mean what if Buck dies this coming season? The second place manager would have to manage two teams!
Manager of the year awards have always been weird. (As well as coach of the year in other leagues.) Sometimes they do go to the manager of whatever team came out of nowhere, and you can see the reasoning behind that. Hyde and Francona definitely fit that mold in the AL. Hyde of course had the big improvement for the Orioles, but Francona might deserve some recognition as well. I think I deleted the bookmarks after the series, but I had the preseason articles with all the 94 writer's votes from ESPN, the Athletic, and Fangraphs and Cleveland was the only division winner who was not picked by anyone. Not only that, but the on the sites that also picked wild cards, they had no votes for that either.
Also, exactly zero of the writers picked Houston to win the World Series, and I thought it should have been an obvious pick in March. 43 writers picked the Dodgers, 26 were on the Blue Jays, 9 White Sox, 4 Brewers, 3 Yankees, 2 Braves, 2 Angels (HA!) and single tallies for the Giants, Padres, Rays, Red Sox, and Twins. Yes, that means they were all eliminated before the start of the Series.
But in the NL, the manager ballot is chalk. Everyone knew the Dodgers were going to be good, The Braves won it all last year, and I don't think anyone was expecting them to fall on their face. Showalter always seems to be popular, but 24 of the writers picked them to win their division over the Braves in the pre season, so it is not like people thought it was a bad team. Chalk every year would be a bad move, (in Football Belichick and Reid would have to buy outbuildings to hold their trophies) but there weren't any great out of nowhere stories in the NL.
I see people mentioning Thomson, who had a fine season, they played at almost a 95 win pace under him, but they finished third - by alot - and won 5 more games than last year. The voting is done before the postseason, so that run doesn't garner any consideration. I might have given him my vote, but my expectations for the Phillies was about 77 wins, so they exceeded my expectations just by being a pretty good team. The writers has a bit higher expectations. They gave 8 division winning votes to them and they were prominently represented as a possible wild card, so in all probability, they were (in the regular season) just who the writers thought they would be.
When the awards for hitting and pitching are based on WAR/sabermetrics/statistics and have nothing to do with eyeball evaluation, intangibles, or fan sentiment, there just ain't the anticipation, debate, or mystery required for an exciting award ceremony. Who'd really want to watch? (Not to mention those of us who would like to see playoff and World Series performance considered.)
Interesting brush aside of Hyde. He won the Golden Globes version of this award already. All three managers are certainly deserving considering how their teams all did this year, especially against projections, big budget opponents, and historic Playoff droughts.
In the regular season, it was just kind of cute. They won 5 more games than last year and finished in third, 14 games back. They were never a factor, and only made the newly expanded playoffs by a game, and partially because for some reason, the Brewers (who they beat out by a game for the last spot) decided at the trade deadline, perhaps not realizing they were winning their division, made a trade that made them worse this year for some kind of gain in their future, as if they were a last place team rather than a first place one.
Look at the record after he took over not including the Girardi part of the season. The change was more than cute. They only made the playoffs by one game because of the hole they dug themselves into in the first half. Excluding that, their performance was as good as anyone’s and their post season performance bears that out. Thompson deserves major credit for that. It was the only variable that changed. Even the injury to Harper didn’t stop them. To my mind, his performance outshone everyone else by a mile.
Dusty Baker not being a finalist after guiding the Astros to the second-most wins in franchise history after hemorrhaging star players for years - including most recently Correa - really shines a light on how silly this award is.
Baker beat Servais 12/19 times and his team finished 16 games ahead of Servais’ in the standings and… Servais is the finalist? Help me make sense of it. And Dave Roberts, with the Dodgers $750M payroll, being a finalist nullifies any “he just rolls the ball out & watches” argument.
Maybe. But, also: "BBWAA: 'I'm not voting for DAVE ROBERTS for Manager of the Year AGAIN just to have him lose in the playoffs.' Not saying it's fair, but I think that's why."
I grew up in mid-state CT on a street that was probably split equally between Red Sox fans and Yankees fans, so naturally I was a Minnesota Twins fan (mostly based on player names such as Camilo Pascual, Earl (the “Livewire”) Battey, Jim (“Mudcat”) Grant and, of course, Zoilo Versalles).
Bride and I moved to the Philly suburbs at age 60 to be near our oldest daughter and her family, and watched Phillies games with two SIL/Phillies fans this season. Phillies were dead in the water under Joe Girardi, resurrected from the dead by Rob Thomson, who did nothing to impress outwardly except stick by his guns, support his players, and make “non-SOP” decisions (like using best relievers for heart of other team’s order early on, rather than just waiting for the late innings). He won me over.
If I were dictator for a day, I would get rid of the "Manager of the Year" award. Nobody has the slightest idea how to measure a single manager, let alone how to compare one manager to another. Is there any other award in baseball where you are the best one year and cut the next year?
LOL Shoei Ohtani being all demure while accepting the award only he could win.
Otherwise, the idea of an awards show modeled after the Oscars strikes me frankly as terrible. Every year people who actually watch the Oscars (and there are fewer and fewer of them...) seem to talk only about how the show was too long and too boring and the only interesting things about it are when someone gets in someone's face or someone's boob pops out of their dress or something. Most of which are probably staged anyway, because that's how content creation works these days.
Clearly it doesn't have to be that lame, but they could put together, say, an hour-long show for MLB Network, MLB.tv, etc. that would dole out the awards, including montages of the player's highlights (for the manager awards, this would just be shots of Showalter walking back and forth to the dugout with a toothpick in his mouth and one hand in his back pocket, I guess...). It would help in years where the vote was close to have people in the know lay out the pros and cons, as Nicholson-Smith did.
Of course, ESPN and other sports shows already do this with each award, so maybe MLB doesn't need to do that either. But I really don't think modeling ourselves after a program whose viewership has been steadily decreasing for most of the last decade is the right course.
I don't know about the fan reaction to the other great Rookies but here in playoff-starved Seattle, Julio was instantly more than just a great player. He brought that greatest of gifts: Hope.
Love the idea of "the Aarons"...could also honour the #1 ballplayer of all time according to this book I read and call them "the Willies"...but the sophomoric giggling would obviously get out of hand.
I was already thinking “Willies” would be better. Oscar, Emmy, Tony - it’s supposed to be a first name, not a last name, and has to end in an “e” sound. If we want to honor Aaron (who is as worthy as anyone), they should be the Henrys. I still prefer renaming the Braves as the Hammers.
Joe and Michael Schur have advocated for this on the Poscast several times. It would honor Aaron (always worth doing), end any controversy around the name, and even enable the fans to continue the "chop", just with a balled fist, now as a "hammer" It would be the best team name change pretty much ever. I hate the Braves as a life long Mets fan, but who wouldn't support them becoming the Hammers?
Ellen Adair is going to be very upset you didn't mention Rob Thomson. While he wasn't nominated, no shout out for him? I don't get it - I'd think he should win in a landslide considering how well the Phillies did under him (even ignoring the post season). They were on a 70-win pace under Girardi, and a 95 win pace under Thomson - and that was for 111 games.
Dodgers/Mets/Braves all did about what you'd expect, and I'm not sure any of them really stood out with anything they did - they pretty much played to their talent level (minus the Mets collapse at the end, but I guess that's expected with them).
Why did they give out awards in '94? No one finished an actual season of baseball, there was no stretch run, no postseason, just a wasted season in which awards were meaningless.
with buck, is the number 4 the relevant number? or is it 0, the number of championships he's won? dusty took so much shit for not winning, buck seems to take little. and i'll bet buck is the only manager ever to be fired twice by teams that won the world series the next year. he's always had the horses. anyhow, a nice night for the old guys who pay attention to the data and/but make their own decisions.
I would probably watch the show. They could invite all the top 3s, throw in the silver slugger and the gold gloves, have each player have highlight film done for the show, narrated by either a baseball guy or like Liev Schreiber or something. By the way, it seems this top 3 thing has come about in the last few years. I mean, they vote for everyone, but then they tell you who the top three are. They could have them all on stage and eliminate the third place guy like Miss America or the Masked Singer or something, and then have the second place guy up there trying to not look sad when they announce the winner.
Keep in mind, that the runner up has to fulfill the duties of the winner if he is not able to complete them, so coming in second is still something. I mean what if Buck dies this coming season? The second place manager would have to manage two teams!
Manager of the year awards have always been weird. (As well as coach of the year in other leagues.) Sometimes they do go to the manager of whatever team came out of nowhere, and you can see the reasoning behind that. Hyde and Francona definitely fit that mold in the AL. Hyde of course had the big improvement for the Orioles, but Francona might deserve some recognition as well. I think I deleted the bookmarks after the series, but I had the preseason articles with all the 94 writer's votes from ESPN, the Athletic, and Fangraphs and Cleveland was the only division winner who was not picked by anyone. Not only that, but the on the sites that also picked wild cards, they had no votes for that either.
Also, exactly zero of the writers picked Houston to win the World Series, and I thought it should have been an obvious pick in March. 43 writers picked the Dodgers, 26 were on the Blue Jays, 9 White Sox, 4 Brewers, 3 Yankees, 2 Braves, 2 Angels (HA!) and single tallies for the Giants, Padres, Rays, Red Sox, and Twins. Yes, that means they were all eliminated before the start of the Series.
But in the NL, the manager ballot is chalk. Everyone knew the Dodgers were going to be good, The Braves won it all last year, and I don't think anyone was expecting them to fall on their face. Showalter always seems to be popular, but 24 of the writers picked them to win their division over the Braves in the pre season, so it is not like people thought it was a bad team. Chalk every year would be a bad move, (in Football Belichick and Reid would have to buy outbuildings to hold their trophies) but there weren't any great out of nowhere stories in the NL.
I see people mentioning Thomson, who had a fine season, they played at almost a 95 win pace under him, but they finished third - by alot - and won 5 more games than last year. The voting is done before the postseason, so that run doesn't garner any consideration. I might have given him my vote, but my expectations for the Phillies was about 77 wins, so they exceeded my expectations just by being a pretty good team. The writers has a bit higher expectations. They gave 8 division winning votes to them and they were prominently represented as a possible wild card, so in all probability, they were (in the regular season) just who the writers thought they would be.
When the awards for hitting and pitching are based on WAR/sabermetrics/statistics and have nothing to do with eyeball evaluation, intangibles, or fan sentiment, there just ain't the anticipation, debate, or mystery required for an exciting award ceremony. Who'd really want to watch? (Not to mention those of us who would like to see playoff and World Series performance considered.)
Interesting brush aside of Hyde. He won the Golden Globes version of this award already. All three managers are certainly deserving considering how their teams all did this year, especially against projections, big budget opponents, and historic Playoff droughts.
Hyde was NOT brushed aside. Joe, in fact, bent over backwards, to let everyone know this is Hyde’s award in a runaway.
No love for Rob Thompson? Most remarkable turnaround and post season run in a very long time I would vote for him in a heartbeat.
Well awards were voted on before playoffs started, so there’s that to consider.
I know, but still.....
So he was a worthy candidate. But I think the love for him wasn’t there until starting with the 6 run 9th of the first playoff game.
Not so. The Phillies turnaround post-Girardi was “front page” news.
In the regular season, it was just kind of cute. They won 5 more games than last year and finished in third, 14 games back. They were never a factor, and only made the newly expanded playoffs by a game, and partially because for some reason, the Brewers (who they beat out by a game for the last spot) decided at the trade deadline, perhaps not realizing they were winning their division, made a trade that made them worse this year for some kind of gain in their future, as if they were a last place team rather than a first place one.
Look at the record after he took over not including the Girardi part of the season. The change was more than cute. They only made the playoffs by one game because of the hole they dug themselves into in the first half. Excluding that, their performance was as good as anyone’s and their post season performance bears that out. Thompson deserves major credit for that. It was the only variable that changed. Even the injury to Harper didn’t stop them. To my mind, his performance outshone everyone else by a mile.
Dusty Baker not being a finalist after guiding the Astros to the second-most wins in franchise history after hemorrhaging star players for years - including most recently Correa - really shines a light on how silly this award is.
Baker beat Servais 12/19 times and his team finished 16 games ahead of Servais’ in the standings and… Servais is the finalist? Help me make sense of it. And Dave Roberts, with the Dodgers $750M payroll, being a finalist nullifies any “he just rolls the ball out & watches” argument.
BBWAA: "I'm not voting for Dusty for Manager of the Year AGAIN just to have him lose in the playoffs." Not saying it's fair, but I think that's why.
Maybe. But, also: "BBWAA: 'I'm not voting for DAVE ROBERTS for Manager of the Year AGAIN just to have him lose in the playoffs.' Not saying it's fair, but I think that's why."
Help me understand the difference.
Sorry, assumed that meant an editor commenting.
I grew up in mid-state CT on a street that was probably split equally between Red Sox fans and Yankees fans, so naturally I was a Minnesota Twins fan (mostly based on player names such as Camilo Pascual, Earl (the “Livewire”) Battey, Jim (“Mudcat”) Grant and, of course, Zoilo Versalles).
Bride and I moved to the Philly suburbs at age 60 to be near our oldest daughter and her family, and watched Phillies games with two SIL/Phillies fans this season. Phillies were dead in the water under Joe Girardi, resurrected from the dead by Rob Thomson, who did nothing to impress outwardly except stick by his guns, support his players, and make “non-SOP” decisions (like using best relievers for heart of other team’s order early on, rather than just waiting for the late innings). He won me over.
If I were dictator for a day, I would get rid of the "Manager of the Year" award. Nobody has the slightest idea how to measure a single manager, let alone how to compare one manager to another. Is there any other award in baseball where you are the best one year and cut the next year?
LOL Shoei Ohtani being all demure while accepting the award only he could win.
Otherwise, the idea of an awards show modeled after the Oscars strikes me frankly as terrible. Every year people who actually watch the Oscars (and there are fewer and fewer of them...) seem to talk only about how the show was too long and too boring and the only interesting things about it are when someone gets in someone's face or someone's boob pops out of their dress or something. Most of which are probably staged anyway, because that's how content creation works these days.
Clearly it doesn't have to be that lame, but they could put together, say, an hour-long show for MLB Network, MLB.tv, etc. that would dole out the awards, including montages of the player's highlights (for the manager awards, this would just be shots of Showalter walking back and forth to the dugout with a toothpick in his mouth and one hand in his back pocket, I guess...). It would help in years where the vote was close to have people in the know lay out the pros and cons, as Nicholson-Smith did.
Of course, ESPN and other sports shows already do this with each award, so maybe MLB doesn't need to do that either. But I really don't think modeling ourselves after a program whose viewership has been steadily decreasing for most of the last decade is the right course.
I kind of like the awards coming out serially. At least then I have baseball to read about every day for a while.
I don't know about the fan reaction to the other great Rookies but here in playoff-starved Seattle, Julio was instantly more than just a great player. He brought that greatest of gifts: Hope.
Most highly-touted rookies do that, though - especially for mediocre/bad teams.
I remember the Astros finally calling up Springer in ‘14 and it felt like a glass of water after 40 days in the desert.
I would guess Oriole and Royal fans feel the same about their rookies.
True, true!
I must be missing something, as you said 99.3% confidence twice, and I feel this must be some reference or inside joke.
I see what you did with AL manager of the year discussion. A bit of a dig about how this award works.
Are people having a problem with seeing how you “Hyde” the truth of the award?
Love the idea of "the Aarons"...could also honour the #1 ballplayer of all time according to this book I read and call them "the Willies"...but the sophomoric giggling would obviously get out of hand.
I was already thinking “Willies” would be better. Oscar, Emmy, Tony - it’s supposed to be a first name, not a last name, and has to end in an “e” sound. If we want to honor Aaron (who is as worthy as anyone), they should be the Henrys. I still prefer renaming the Braves as the Hammers.
I hadn’t heard that before, is “Hammers” actually being talked about as a new name for the franchise? I’m surprised at how well that would work…
Joe and Michael Schur have advocated for this on the Poscast several times. It would honor Aaron (always worth doing), end any controversy around the name, and even enable the fans to continue the "chop", just with a balled fist, now as a "hammer" It would be the best team name change pretty much ever. I hate the Braves as a life long Mets fan, but who wouldn't support them becoming the Hammers?
Ellen Adair is going to be very upset you didn't mention Rob Thomson. While he wasn't nominated, no shout out for him? I don't get it - I'd think he should win in a landslide considering how well the Phillies did under him (even ignoring the post season). They were on a 70-win pace under Girardi, and a 95 win pace under Thomson - and that was for 111 games.
Dodgers/Mets/Braves all did about what you'd expect, and I'm not sure any of them really stood out with anything they did - they pretty much played to their talent level (minus the Mets collapse at the end, but I guess that's expected with them).