How Do You Solve a Problem Like Manager of the Year?

We now have two baseball seasons, a marathon (the regular season) and a sprint (the increasingly elongated postseason), and the Manager of the Year is chosen for the marathon but awarded weeks after the sprint�when most of the marathon has been forgotten and seems almost pointless.

And yes, that timing is true of all baseball awards, but the others (MVP, ROY, Cy Young) tend to be about individual achievement. Cal Raleigh hit 60 homers, Aaron Judge hit .400 for half a season, Shohei did Shohei things. The stats are the stats. We remember those. But Manager of the Year is based upon team performance, on its rises and falls, so it's a little odd to announce that So-and-So has won it long after his team has lost.

This year's AL MOY, for example, is the same as last year's, Cleveland's Stephen Vogt, because the Guardians had that great run in September, caught the Tigers, won the division. That's when the vote was taken. Several days later, the Guardians lost to the Tigers in the Wild Card; they played their last game on October 2. The season literally continued for another month without the AL Manager of the Year's team.

How often does the Manager of the Year's team even win the pennant? Here's the AL over the last 20 years:

2020: Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay
2016: Terry Francona, Cleveland
2008: Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay
2006: Jim Leyland, Detroit

And here's the NL:

That's right, in the last 20 years, no team of the NL Manager of the Year has won a pennant. The last to do so was Jack McKeon with the then-Florida Marlins in 2003. Before that? Bobby Cox in '91. Just once in the Wild Card era. One in 30. Picking via dartboard would give you better odds.

It's actually fun looking over the list of past MOY winners. Bob Melvin of the A's won it in 2018? Mike Scioscia of the Angels in 2009? I particularly like 2004. That year means one thing now: The Red Sox coming back from a 3-0 deficit against the Yankees to win the ALCS and then win the World Series for the first time since 2018. And the AL MOY was? Buck Showalter of the Rangers, of course. Don't remember the Rangers in the post? Right, they weren't in the post. They finished third in the AL West. But it was one of those “most improved” awards. They went from 71-91 to 89-73. Great turnaround. Not the story.�

Oh, and yes, if Dan Wilson had won this year's award, as he should have, or even the Blue Jays manager, the Dukes of Hazzard guy, this post would be different.

Again, I don't know how to solve this problem. It's baked into the current system. And the current system is making it worse each season.