Shouldwill Awards - AL MOY edition
Both Manager of the Year awards will be announced today. Since I already made an NL MOY prediction and I have lots to do at work today, I thought I would make this a single-category Shouldwill...
American League Manager of the Year
Should win: Buck Showalter, Texas Rangers
Will win: Buck Showalter.
Buck Showalter is one of the best guys in all of baseball to do a spoonerism with; i.e., changing the first letter of the first name with the first letter of the last name. You get Shuck Bowalter. It's almost as good as Rim Jiggleman. Anyway, Manager of the Year is a tough thing to quantify in terms of who deserves it, but what Buck Showalter did with the Rangers this year, after losing Alex Rodriguez, the American League MVP, to a trade, was amazing. The Rangers won 18 more games this year (89) than they did in 2003, and it was mostly due to the best infield in the American League, featuring Hank Blalock, an amazing season at Shortstop from Michael Young (it was his first year playing that position every day), Alfonso Soriano, and Mark Texiereixieaixiereaia. Showalter also managed his bullpen well, with not one member of the main five bullpen guys having an ERA over 4. These two combined helped to keep Texas in the race down to the wire.
I feel that I should at least mention Alan Trammell, as the Tigers finished a whopping 29 games better (72-90) than they did in 2003 (43-119). However, the Tigers' comparative success to last year has a lot more to do with the free agent signings of Ivan Rodriguez, Carlos Guillen (who was fantastic this year), Ugie Urbina, and RonDeLl White (who played in a surprising 121 games this year). Also, Jeremy Bonderman (21 years old), Nate Robertson (26), and Mike Maroth (26) had nowhere to go but up. However, the Tigers' turnaround is less impressive to me than the Rangers'; the Tigers had those good young pitchers, they were just brought up too soon, and, as I said, they basically had no choice but to improve. The Rangers improved their club with Kenny Rogers, Ryan Drese, and a bunch of inning-eaters in their starting rotation. Now that's impressive. I feel that this choice is too easy for even the writers to screw up.
American League Manager of the Year
Should win: Buck Showalter, Texas Rangers
Will win: Buck Showalter.
Buck Showalter is one of the best guys in all of baseball to do a spoonerism with; i.e., changing the first letter of the first name with the first letter of the last name. You get Shuck Bowalter. It's almost as good as Rim Jiggleman. Anyway, Manager of the Year is a tough thing to quantify in terms of who deserves it, but what Buck Showalter did with the Rangers this year, after losing Alex Rodriguez, the American League MVP, to a trade, was amazing. The Rangers won 18 more games this year (89) than they did in 2003, and it was mostly due to the best infield in the American League, featuring Hank Blalock, an amazing season at Shortstop from Michael Young (it was his first year playing that position every day), Alfonso Soriano, and Mark Texiereixieaixiereaia. Showalter also managed his bullpen well, with not one member of the main five bullpen guys having an ERA over 4. These two combined helped to keep Texas in the race down to the wire.
I feel that I should at least mention Alan Trammell, as the Tigers finished a whopping 29 games better (72-90) than they did in 2003 (43-119). However, the Tigers' comparative success to last year has a lot more to do with the free agent signings of Ivan Rodriguez, Carlos Guillen (who was fantastic this year), Ugie Urbina, and RonDeLl White (who played in a surprising 121 games this year). Also, Jeremy Bonderman (21 years old), Nate Robertson (26), and Mike Maroth (26) had nowhere to go but up. However, the Tigers' turnaround is less impressive to me than the Rangers'; the Tigers had those good young pitchers, they were just brought up too soon, and, as I said, they basically had no choice but to improve. The Rangers improved their club with Kenny Rogers, Ryan Drese, and a bunch of inning-eaters in their starting rotation. Now that's impressive. I feel that this choice is too easy for even the writers to screw up.
posted by Alex @ 10:54 AM
2 Comments:
At 2:32 PM,
Anonymous said…
I think it would've been great if Tramm had won it. Then again, the Tigers still suck.
At 4:59 PM,
R.J. said…
I like Shuck Bowalter because he always wears that dopey workout shirt-type thing over his jersey and Farmer and Rooney ALWAYS talk about on the air. They HATE Bowalter, as they think he argues every call.
Post a Comment
<< Home