Joe Girardi Should Win the American League Manager of the Year - A Bleacher Report Article

Your pal struck a nerve today on Bleacher Report.

I wrote a piece where I said that Joe Girardi was doing the best managing of his career and right now is my pick for manager of the year.

Man, you'd think I had just praised the village idiot for his intelligence.

The comments are flying, all trashing a manager who has had a big budget but injured and often ineffective team and has them in first place.

And according to the readers, that is the manager's FAULT.

Read the whole article here.




 

Joe Girardi should win the AL Manager of the Year

You might be thinking this is a sarcastic title or I am going to write a snarky piece about Girardi and the Yankee payroll.

I'm not.
I am totally serious. I think he deserves the award this year.

Now I know he doesn't have a hope in hell of ACTUALLY winning it. The Manager of the Year almost always goes to a team that wasn't expected to contend or had some strife in the middle of the season to overcome.

Chances are Jim Leyland is going to win his fourth manager of the year or perhaps Ron Washington will win his first. Unless of course the Rays surge gives Joe Maddon his second.

Girardi will probably not get it.
And I can hear the arguments against Girardi already.

"ANYONE can manage a $200 million payroll."
"He's a failure if he DOESN'T finish in first place!"
"How much skill does it take to manage the Yankees?"

I would argue A LOT! Especially after this season.
Going into this year, virtually nobody was picking the Yankees to win the Division. This was the Red Sox division to lose. And lose it they did.

Now the Yankees were helped by the Red Sox 2-8 start and (so far) 5-16 September.
But remember this was a Yankee team that was snubbed by both Cliff Lee and Andy Pettitte in the off season.

This was the Yankee team that went into the regular season with four question marks in their rotation. Remember how everyone (including me) kept snickering "How long can they go with Ivan Nova, Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon in their rotation?"

Evidently the whole season.

And remember how much a disaster Rafael Soriano and Phil Hughes were the first half of the season? Remember what a mess A. J. Burnett has been all year long?

How Joba Chamberlain is lost for the season?

And somehow the Yankee bullpen has become their strength.

The Yankees won despite getting only 16 homers and 61 RBI from Alex Rodriguez in less than 100 games.

The Yankees won despite having a grand total of one regular player batting over .300.

The Yankees won despite a mediocre injury plagued first half from Derek Jeter.

The Yankees won despite the Jorge Posada debacle in Fenway Park.

The Yankees won despite getting clobbered consistently by the Red Sox in the first half.

The Yankees won despite having Eduardo Nunez in their starting lineup nearly half of their games.

With all of those lumps in the regular season, AND playing in an insane media market where losing the World Series in the bottom of the 9th in Game 7 means the season is a complete failure AND every single managerial move is picked apart the second it happens.

Throw in the fact that nobody is sure how the power structure operates in the Bronx anymore. Is Hank in charge? Hal? Brian Cashman? Mike Francesa?

And despite all of that, the Yankees not only won the Division, they did so with a week to go. And if they win one more game, they will have clinched the best record in the American League.

At what point do we give Girardi credit for what he's done?

I am not convinced ANYONE could have managed this Yankee team to the best record in the American League. Remember in Girardi's first season managing in the Bronx that injuries, strife and a powerful Red Sox and Rays team put the Yankees in third place. That was all the way back in 2008.

I am convinced that many managers would have folded like a tent with this Yankees team.
I am convinced that given the circumstances of the first half of the season, the Red Sox surge in mid season and a mediocre stretch in mid August would have sent some managers spiraling.

And the fact of the matter is Giradi has kept the Yankees focused and now they are in a position that most people felt wasn't going to happen this year.

I think that should be enough for him to win Manager of the Year.

He won't. They'll give it to a manager with a smaller payroll. But take heart Joe. That's how you won your 2006 National League Manager of the Year with the destitute Marlins.

I guess things even out.

Mattingly and Collins deserve Manager of the Year consideration

It's obvious that Kirk Gibson is going to win the National League manager of the year. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY was picking the Diamondbacks to win the NL West this year, let alone take an 8 1/2 game lead in early September.

So Gibson will add a Manager of the Year trophy next to his MVP (which will no doubt be the subject of another blog post.)

But take a look at what Don Mattingly and Terry Collins have done. Both are playing for big budgeted fiascos. The Dodgers have had as ugly a season as I can remember with all of the behind the scenes nonsense. The McCourt divorce. The handling of the Brian Stowe beating. The MLB take over. The Bankruptcy. The money being taken out of the team for personal reasons. The fans staying away in droves.

There was every reason in the world for the Dodgers to pack up and not show up. And for a while that is exactly what they were doing.

The Mets were also a mess. I thought they were a 90 loss team waiting to happen. The post Madoff Amazin' Mess was a mismatch of broken down veterans, expensive players who wanted out, young players who weren't ready and a parade of players on the disabled list.

And playing in the same Divison as the Phillies and Braves meant the season was irrelevant in April. And come trading deadline, they were sellers.

90 losses may have been a generous prediction.

Yet here we are on September 10th. The Dodgers are just 1 game under .500.
The Mets are 2 games under .500.

It would not take a Herculean effort for both teams to finish with a winning record.

The Dodgers are aided by the fact that Clayton Kershaw should win the NL Cy Young and there is a case for Matt Kemp to win the MVP.

The Mets don't have that star power, but they are finding unlikely heroes and staying focused in a way that I didn't think they had in them.

So give Don Mattingly and Terry Collins a lot of credit.
Both the Dodgers and Mets are ugly places off of the field and if the on field product reflected that, nobody would have blinked.

But if they could weather the storm of the craziness of 2011 and say "Hey! At least we put a winning product on the field" then THAT is worthy of Manager of the Year consideration.

Color me impressed, Dodger and Met fans.

Look at that! The A's show a little fight and win a game!

An out away from losing for the 11th straight time, the A's came from behind and beat the White Sox.

Bob Melvin's A's should a little fight.
And I don't believe that was a double possessive, but I am sure my mom will tell me either way.

A win is the first step.
Here's the second step... creep closer to the Rangers.

Guess what? They are only 8 games back in the loss column and the Rangers inevitably have a bad August. (They did last year as well... but no other AL West team was even decent last year.)

Think about it... if the A's turn around and win this thing, Bob Melvin might win the Manager of the Year. And if he does that he'd win it in both leagues, joining Tony LaRussa, Jim Leyland, Bobby Cox and Lou Piniella.

Ah maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.
It's just one win.