BBWAA Awards Roundtable: Who will win Manager of the Year?

BBWAA Awards week will continue Tuesday night with the announcement of the winners of the Manager of the Year Awards for the National and American Leagues. The winners will be announced Tuesday night at 6 p.m. live on MLB Network and Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker is among the finalists for the Award in the National League.

While no one on the Battery Power staff has a vote in the actual awards, below are our thoughts and who we would vote for if we were given the opportunity. (Note: Roundtable participants were not required to vote for one of the BBWAA finalists)

National League: (Finalists: Brian Snitker, Buck Showalter, Dave Roberts)

Kris: I suspect that Buck Showalter might win this, but if I had a vote it would go to Brian Snitker simply because it was the Braves that ran down Showalter’s team to claim a fifth straight division title. Snitker has proven time and again that he is capable of holding the ship steady no matter the circumstances. Atlanta was under .500 for the first two months of the season and then put the pedal down and was one of the best teams in baseball from that point on.

Eric: I would give it to Snitker. For me, Roberts doesn’t move the needle much as a manager and the Dodgers success feels like a function of their roster which is insane. Between Buck and Snit, I think that the work Snit did to keep the team together and allow them to almost never lose to run down the Mets in the second half means he deserves the nod.

Sam: Snitker, and this is not biased. It’s more so that with the rosters the other two managers were given, Snitker got more out of them. The other two rosters were supposed to perform the way that they did. Most projections had the Braves with fewer wins than the other two

DJourn: I’ll cut against the grain and go with Bob Melvin. I was going to go with Rob Thomson, given the turn-around the Phillies had under his stewardship, but Melvin gets the nod because sure, why not.

Ivan: This award, frankly, sucks/makes no sense because there’s no useful definition for it. So, let’s go with “team that most outperformed expectations.” That actually gives you the Dodgers in the NL if you do it on a win basis, but that’s boring because… I mean hopefully I don’t have to explain why. If you do it for divisional odds, you get Ollie Marmol for the Cardinals, whose team placed third in terms of “wins over expected wins” but won a division they were strongly favored to lose, and made the playoffs while not really being favored to do that, either.

Cassidy: This is easy for me, Braves fan or not Snitker coming off the World Series you got the biggest target on your back in the toughest division top to bottom. At 23-27 having that meeting and overcoming the 10.5 game deficit is an obvious choice for me.

Daniel: I’m with Ivan, in that this is a dumb award that isn’t really defined well and is almost impossible to judge. I’ll give it to Snitker just for playing the kids and for what the Braves did down the stretch, but truly so much of what this award is about is just impossible to judge.

Shawn: It should be Brian Snitker. He did a great job managing through injuries (Rosario, Albies, Acuna Jr.)and also turning our season around at the start of June. Combine that with supporting the instant impact of Michael Harris II and Spencer Strider, and you find Snitker did his best regular season managing job to date while overcoming some unexpected occurrences.

Demetrius: Count me in with the camp that thinks this is a dumb award. With that being said, had the Dodgers won a few more games this year then Dave Roberts would’ve been a shoo-in. It’s hard to argue with breaking the single-season wins record and it’s still kind of hard not to default with that. With that being said, the Braves went from being under .500 in June to winning 101 games and if you ask anybody in that clubhouse then they’ll tell you that Brian Snitker had a lot to do with that. Snitker’s got a case and I’d give it to him, both as a homer and a neutral.

American League: (Finalists: Terry Francona, Scott Servais, Brandon Hyde)

Eric: I give the edge to Servais, but this is a fun group. That Seattle team is fun to watch, plays hard every single game, and seems to be a bit ahead of schedule. That doesn’t happen without a capable manager at the helm.

Sam: it’s Hyde for me. The O’s gave up all that talent at the deadline and still ended up with 4 games over .500. Anyone saying they picked them to go over .500 at the beginning of the year is probably just an overt optimist, or they are lying.

Ivan: It’s Brandon Hyde for whatever was going on in Baltimore over the summer. It’s Terry Francona if you hate the idea of a manager of a team that didn’t even make the stupidly-expanded playoffs winning this award. Me, I’d rather they just get rid of this award if they’re not going to define a real set of criteria for it.

Kris: As good a story as the Mariners returning to the postseason was, it has to be Brandon Hyde. For many, the Orioles were an example of everything that was wrong with baseball as their slow rebuild continued to plod along. Under Hyde’s leadership, they not only finished above .500, but were in contention for the final Wild Card spot. No one saw that coming.

DJourn: Baltimore got better. Seattle made the playoffs, finally. Cleveland won their division, unexpectedly. I’m echoing Ivan’s sentiments here, when I say the idea behind this award is flawed. Oddly, the skippers of the top two teams in the AL aren’t represented. Houston won 106. The Yankees won 99. Terry Francona? Sure, sounds good to me.

Daniel: Again, dumb award, but I’ll go with Scott Servais because Seattle was a cool story.

Cassidy: Hyde easily led the O’s to the 1st two over 500 months in 4 years. With so much young talent this was such a fun team to watch and Hyde got the best out of them.

Shawn: Brandon Hyde deserves the award. I know Seattle and Cleveland won more, but when you consider where Baltimore has been and low expectations entering this season, Hyde deserves it for the job he did. From developing their arms to helping to create what now looks like one of the best young teams in the majors, Hyde did a lot for Baltimore’s present and future this season.

Demetrius: The fact that the Orioles were even in the conversation past the All-Star break to make the Postseason is enough to make this a very easy choice to give the award to Brandon Hyde. Just an incredible season for them.