Baseball awards are ideal fodder for debate, especially among statisticians. When the Baseball Writers Association of America announces its annual picks in early November, researchers pour through the numbers to conclude whether the voting body got it right.
For awards like the MVP, Rookie of the Year, and Cy Young, there is ample data to help us assess the legitimacy of each selection. We can compare WAR totals, Statcast metrics, and league rankings to argue for or against a candidate.
The beauty of statistical analysis is that — at least in theory — it allows us to reach conclusions in a purely objective sense. When it comes to the Manager of the Year, however, fans and statheads alike must rely on subjective judgments to form our arguments.
While the Manager of the Year carries some prestige, it is easily the most subjective accolade in the sport. For many reasons, it is also the strangest.
The Criteria
Which qualities make a skipper worthy of being named Manager of the Year? Since the award was first handed out in 1983, it’s primarily gone to managers that have led their clubs to division titles. There have been some exceptions to that rule, like when — in his first season as a skipper — Joe Girardi took home the honor despite a losing record (78-84) and fourth-place finish with the 2006 Marlins.
Girardi’s surprise win may seem like an aberration, but it perfectly illustrates how voters seem to view the award. Because there are few quantitative ways of measuring managerial aptitude, voters must make informed guesses about how well a manager performed during a season. Whenever a team outperforms pre-season expectations by a significant margin, the manager is generally given credit for getting the most out of his roster. That’s exactly what happened with Girardi, who was ultimately rewarded for keeping one of the league’s most inexperienced teams close to the .500 mark.
Quintessential Quirks
To date, Girardi remains the only manager to earn the award with a losing record. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the goal of any manager is to win as many games as possible. What’s more interesting is that there have been eight Managers of the Year to lead their team to 100-win seasons, compared to ten recognized skippers whose teams missed the playoffs.
Recent trends show that the baseball writers favor managers who lead their clubs to significant win increases from the previous season, and who excel in the face of limitations — like a low payroll imposed by ownership. Eight of the last thirteen winners in the American League have come from three small market teams: the A’s, Rays, and Indians. The NL results in that time have not been as skewed toward low payrolls, though just one of the last eight NL winners led his team to the league’s best record (Davey Johnson, 2012 Nationals).
The subjective nature of the award is exactly what makes it so hard to predict. Based on past results, the criteria seems to be a combination of having limited resources, improving upon the previous season, and exceeding pundits’ pre-season predictions. But there is no clear definition of who the Manager of the Year should be, and thus it’s hard to say what the award actually means in terms of career legacy. Dusty Baker is a three-time recipient, and yet his postseason shortcomings may ultimately mean that he falls short of Cooperstown induction.
Earning Manager of the Year is also no guarantee that a skipper will keep his job — Matt Williams and Paul Molitor were both fired a year after their wins, and one of this season’s AL finalists, Rick Renteria, has already been dismissed by the White Sox. Major league managers have tenuous job security, something that even a noteworthy accolade cannot change.
Searle’s Final Say
As baseball becomes increasingly driven by analytics teams and sabermetric gurus, the role of the manager continues to evolve. Front offices have considerable input on lineup construction and defensive alignment, making the manager less of an in-game tactician and more of a mediary between the front office and the players. Do managers still deserve the primary credit for their team’s success, and how can we measure the manager’s impact when so much of the decision-making process is out of their hands? Deciding the Manager of the Year, already a complicated process, will only become more difficult as baseball’s current Era of Big Data progresses.
