The 2017 Manager of the Year winners have been announced, as voted on by the BBWAA. For the AL, the winner is Minnesota’s Paul Molitor. For the NL, Torey Lovullo of the Diamondbacks took home the honors.
Torey Lovullo and Paul Molitor win Manager of the Year awards
Both managers shepherded major turnarounds in 2017.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
By clicking on this post, you admit you at least pretend to care about possibly the least exciting award out of all the honors handed out after the season. So congratulations on that, sincerely.
Lovullo won the award with 18 first place votes, with Dodgers’ skipper Dave Roberts receiving five first place votes to take second place, leaving the Rockies’ Bud Black in third.
Roberts took the Dodgers to the World Series, beating Lovullo’s Diamondbacks along the way, but Lovullo took the team from a 69-win season in 2016 to a 93-win season this year in his inaugural year with the team. With the way these awards are usually decided, that’s as good a reason as any for him to win. A surprise turnaround will almost always get more notice than sustained success.
It’s the fourth year in a row a manager in his first year with his team has won the award. In addition to the three finalists, the Brewers’ Craig Counsell, the Nationals’ Dusty Baker, and the Cubs’ Joe Maddon received votes.
In the AL, Molitor took the prize after turning the team around from a league-worst 103 losses to sneaking into the playoffs with 85 wins this year. Terry Francona, who led the Indians to 102 wins and an ALDS berth, came in second, and the Astros’ A.J. Hinch came in third.
Once again, amazing turnaround beats a major success story.
Both wins were deserved and a cap to great seasons by both teams even if they weren’t the clubs that made it to the World Series. But that’s not the point of the award, and if it were, it would be a way more boring announcement than it is.
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