I disagree about Tosca. The man hasn't figured out how to use his bullpen yet. Until he does so, he shouldn't be regarded as a MOY candidate.

As we all know, the Jays "don't do" sacrifices, steals and hit-and-runs, so his bullpen strategy becomes scrutinized even more.

"On offense, there weren't a lot of surprises this year. Jason Giambi and Bernie Williams aren't what they once were (although still darned good), and Hideki Matsui picked up a ton of RBI but generally underperformed. But for the most part, guys did about what they were expected to do."

Hmmm. I'd say losing Williams, Derek Jeter, and Nick Johnson -- three guys capable of .400 OBPs -- for about six weeks apiece counts as a surprise or three. I'd say watching Giambi struggle for the first eight weeks of the season (OPS on May 26: .714) counts as a surprise. I'd say watching Hideki Matsui, who'd hit 50 homers in Japan, emerge as the groundball king here in the U.S. counts as a surprise.

The Yankee offense was full of surprises this year, most of them not positive ones. Jeter reversed a three year decline, Jorge Posada put up an MVP-caliber season, Johnson became one of the toughest outs in the league -- those were positive surprises. Besides Alfonso Soriano, I'm hard-pressed to find a Yankee hitter whose performance matched my expectations this year, and I'd guess a lot of other people -- fans of them or not -- would agree.

I can't believe Alan Trammell didn't even pull a single vote. If he's not a good manager, then explain to me how a 43-119 team goes 18-19 in one run games.

C'mon, not even a third place vote out there? Where's the respect?

Thanks, guys, for the comments. A few responses....

kamatoa:

I admittedly didn't follow the Devil Rays much this year, but it's hard for me to give a lot of support to a guy whose team won 63 games. You raise a good point about Baldelli, and Huff did come into his own (Piniella's decision to play him every day ranks right with Grady Little's decision to play Ortiz every day). Crawford I'm not so sure about. He drew 26 walks and had a .309 OBP. I think he's got a lot of promise, but what he did this year is vintage Tony Womack. Not a servicable leadoff hitter in my book.

You're much closer to the situation than I am, and it certainly sounds like Piniella has done a lot of good for the franchise, but I'm not sure how much a change in local perception should come into play in the Manager of the Year award. In my own voting, he's not someone I even remotely considered. I think Little (#6) and Tosca (no votes; good call, Joe) are better choices.

Jay:

Sorry, jaded Padre fan here who forgets that three guys lost for six weeks apiece constitutes an unpleasant surprise for most teams. :-)

No real shock losing Johnson to injury; that's pretty much what he's done as a pro (well, that and hit a ton when healthy). Jeter and Williams I'll give you. As for eight weeks of Giambi struggling, he finished up at 939 OPS. Given his age and past performance, that seems about in line with what could be expected (he only lost 94 OPS points off 2002, when he lost 104 OPS points off 2001). As for Matsui, he was a complete unknown. I know there are some models out there that attempt to translate Japanese baseball stats into North American equivalencies, but there haven't been a lot of data points and I'm not sure how successful those methods have been. From a distance, I'd classify Matsui as a mild disappointment. He only becomes more than that if you bought into the hype that said he was Brian Giles light.

Bringing it back to the manager, Torre deserves props, but I don't think it's because he inspired Posada to reach new levels or found ways to work around a Bernie Williams injury. His primary contribution (and it shouldn't be underestimated) is how he handles the media and his boss. IMHO, he is the perfect manager for that job.

David:

Probably the most impressive thing to me about Trammell is that he managed to get that team to win five of their last six games to avoid the big-league futility record. What are the odds of a team that wins just 43 games in a season winning five games in any six-game stretch?

I agree that Tosca could have gotten some love.

I think another aspect of the Manager's job has to be keeping the players both healthy and happy. Overusing players so they get injured or lose their effectiveness should be a knock on a manager. Keeping the players happy so they are willing to give hometeam discounts, or try and convince other players to join the team is something a manager can try to do to (or at least not be so unpleasent that the reverse is true).

Maybe it's because I'm an AL fan that I'm harder on AL managers. But if anything, this analysis suggests that other than Tony Pena, all the real managers are in the NL.

A question - why is the people side of the job referred to as "intangibles"? People management is well recognized as an aspect of management, just like the administrative and strategic, and is just as hard to quantify as the other two. I am asking particularly because intangibles are frowned on so much here, especially when it is used with respect to players... Is there any implication that (a) it does not exist or (b) it is less concrete in terms of contributing value to the team than, say, strategy?

Would it be possible to measure people management capabilities by correlating players' records under different managers? Obviously, with a single player, the record could get heavily skewed by age and injuries, but correlating groups of players before-during-after they played for a particular manager should work? i.e. take the set of players who played year X under this manager, and played year X-1 with someone else, and look at the average delta in their park-adjusted performance. Compare this average to the same data for other managers. We could get similar average deltas for players who move from playing under this manager to playing under others, and compare with this data for other managers. Shouldn't that give us a fair starting point on measuring the manager's ability to get the best out of their players?

And no, you didn't hear me volunteering to do the analysis :-)

Tristam:

Hard to say how the Marlins would have done under a full season of Torborg, but I'd think a slight dropoff from 2002's 79-win season wouldn't have been unexpected.

Michael:

Agreed about keeping players healthy and happy. Although I didn't mention it explicity, I do consider that part of the administrative function.

Rob:

No, we all pretty much visit B-R on our own, without anyone telling us to. :-) There still isn't a real good way to put positive spin on the Royals' pitching staff. In the AL, only Detroit (5.30) and Texas (5.67) had worse ERAs, and they won 43 and 71 games, respectively. The league average this year was 4.36. The Royals' team leader had 10 wins. Anyone know the last time a team whose leader had 10 wins finished with a winning record?

This isn't exactly the same thing, but to give you some idea, STATS ran an article in their 2001 Baseball Scoreboard book (p. 47) which showed that from 1900-2000, just 11 teams in Major League history had finished a season six-plus games over .500 without a 13-game winner:

1940 Red Sox   82-72
1967 Angels    84-77
1980 Red Sox   83-77
1984 Red Sox   86-76
1986 Phillies  86-75
1987 Cardinals 95-67 (!)
1987 Reds      84-78
1990 Expos     85-77
1991 Cardinals 84-78
1998 Angels    85-77
2000 Reds      85-77

The Royals looked to have a horrible pitching staff going in, delivered on that promise, and yet still won 83 games. This is called getting the maximum out of the minimum.

Marc:

Not sure I'd go quite that far. Personally I thought Gardenhire did a terrific job again this year.

Swami:

I personally refer to the people side of management as intangibles because I personally do not know of a way to quantify it. I don't deny its existence or its importance. But I don't know a good way to extract any useful information about it that I can then integrate back into the larger equation. Also, on a more general level, I don't frown on intangibles, I just don't know how to include them in objective analysis other than by mentioning them in passing as a possible factor that cannot be easily measured.

Your idea about correlating players' records under different managers is interesting but there is so much instability in terms of managerial and player movement (above and beyond the age and injury variables you mention), that I'm not sure this is even feasible.