Looking Forward To A Retirement

During a recent meaningless end-of-season game between long-eliminated teams, the announcers embarked on a discussion of their choices for the big awards. It was the usual stuff -- should Clayton Kershaw be considered for the MVP, should Mike Stanton be dinged for his team's performance, does Robinson Cano get credit for Seattle's giant leap forward, that kind of thing.

And then came the manager of the year award. This is the hole into which baseball people pour all of their ignorance.

What ensued, as usual, was not a disposition on managers, but on the most surprising teams. The assumption is that when a team appears to outperform its talent, the manager must have been working some magic. It's the same logic by which we credit or blame the President of the United States for the state of the economy.

That dynamic led to some hysterical assertions. The in-the-stands reporter touted Buck Showalter for manager of the year because of how 31-year-old Steve Pearce contributed 10 times more wins against replacement than in his previous seven-year career, leading the O's to lay waste to the AL East. The same reporter noted how Showalter's team overcame the decline of Chris Davis, who misplaced 90 points of batting average and 27 home runs from his breakout 2013. By this logic, the skipper earns points for employing over-achievers but is not responsible for under-achievers.

The color analyst touted Ned Yost for AL manager of the year, citing the surprising rise of the Royals. Yost is generally considered one of the more daft field generals who required the intervention of George Brett and the front office to construct productive lineups. Once learned, his expertise extended to filling out the same lineup much of the season and relying on a trio of shutdown relievers to shorten each game to six innings.

I suspect that if the award were being bestowed at the end of July, the A's Bob Melvin would have run away with it, much as his Oakland squad was unexpectedly running away with the league's best record. Evidently Melvin contracted a major case of stupid, because the A's hardly won a game in August and September.

The manager of the year award is a joke and should either be retired or entrusted to managers and GMs to vote on. Sportswriters and broadcasters have little basis for choosing the best manager and have proved that time and again.