Baseball Bloggers Alliance

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance named their inaugural Managers of the Year today, selecting Mike Scioscia of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Jim Tracy of the Colorado Rockies as the best managers in their respective leagues.

Scioscia, who lead the Angels to the American League West division title and into the American League Championship Series despite the tragic loss of Nick Adenhart early in the season, garnered eight first-place votes and 58 total points from twenty ballots cast by bloggers from across baseball.

“Scioscia found a way to keep this team together at every single defining point of the season,” said Joe at Motor City Bengals. Ian at The Blue Jay Hunter agreed, stating, “Scioscia is the cream of the crop when it comes to managers in the American League. ”

Scioscia and the Angels fashioned a 97-65 record in 2009, winning the AL West by 10 games over the Texas Rangers. Ron Gardenhire, who led the Minnesota Twins to a comeback over the Detroit Tigers to take the AL Central crown, received 46 points and six first-place votes. The skipper of the Rangers, Ron Washington, placed third with 30 points and two-first place votes.

Tracy, in comparison, was not even a manager at the beginning of the season, taking over for Clint Hurdle when the Rockies struggled out of the gate. The change in leadership sparked an almost immediate turnaround in team fortunes, as they charged back to respectability and beyond, locking up the National League Wild Card and were not eliminated from the NL West divisional title until the last weekend of the season. The Rockies were bounced from the playoffs by the Philadelphia Phillies in four games.

Tracy was the overwhelming selection of the twenty bloggers who cast National League ballots. He received sixteen first-place votes and 89 points overall. St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa was a distant second, with 28 total points and one first-place selection.

“Jim Tracy not only had his players buy into his system, but he also helped them buy into themselves as a ballclub,” said Jim at Bernie’s Crew. “I have no idea how he managed to create that spark, nor was I happy about it happening, but it’s hard to argue with the facts”, added Brian at Raise the Jolly Roger.

The complete voting results are as follows (first-place votes in parenthesis):

American League

Mike Scioscia, Los Angeles (8) 58
Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota (6) 46
Ron Washington, Texas (2) 30
Don Wakamatsu, Seattle (4) 29
Joe Girardi, New York 8
Terry Francona, Boston 4
Jim Leyland, Detroit 4

National League

Jim Tracy, Colorado (16) 89
Tony LaRussa, St. Louis (1) 28
Bruce Bochy, San Francisco (1) 20
Freddi Gonzalez, Florida (1) 20
Joe Torre, Los Angeles 12
Charlie Manuel, Philadelphia (1) 7
Bud Black, San Diego 3
Bobby Cox, Atlanta 1

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of this writing, the organization consists of 82 blogs spanning 28 of the 30 major league squads as well as general baseball writing.

The BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into “chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted. Those blogs that are not dedicated to a specific team are allowed to vote on either the American League or National League award, but not both.

Ballots are posted on the respective blogs and tabulated on a 5-3-1 point scale for first, second and third.

*The New York chapter elected to have one voter stand in for both of their designated slots, and as such the vote was counted twice.

For more information about the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, please e-mail founder Daniel Shoptaw at baseballbloggersalliance@gmail.com. All questions about the group and the voting can be submitted to that e-mail address as well.

This is an official press release from the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.