The BBWAA has awarded its Manager of the Year Awards. Torey Lovullo from Arizona Diamondbacks won the National League, while Paul Molitor from Minnesota Twins, the German outfielder Max Kepler’s team, won the American League Hall-of-Famer award.
In the election, which was conducted by the Baseball Writers Association of America, Lovullo clearly won with 111 points ahead of Dave Roberts (55) from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Lovullo had accomplished the feat of leading the D-backs into the playoffs in his first year in office. The snakes had succeeded in doing so in 2011.
Molitor, who like Lovullo received 18 first place votes, won the award in the AL with 112 points ahead of Terry Francona (90) from the Cleveland Indians.
“I’m humble, really,”Molitor said after the announcement in the MLB Network,”You know, an award like this goes back to the organization and work of my coaches and players. If you win the Rookie of the Year, Cy Young or MVP, it’s about the player. But this award, I think, relates more to what everyone has done to help the Twins turn this around.”
Molitor began the season in his third year in office and had finished the 2016 season with 103 defeats. In addition, it was his last contract year and he was given a new Chief Baseball Officer.
So the signs were not good for further cooperation. But after Molitor had led the young team to the AL Widcard and thus into the playoffs despite all the prophecies of doom, he even got a new contract. Rightly so, since never before had a team reached the playoffs directly as a result of a 100 defeat season.
With this award Molitor is the second manager to be named Manager of the Year after a hall-of-fame-career as a player. The first one was Frank Robinson, who won the 1989 Baltimore Orioles Prize.
Lovullo, on the other hand, proved to be a stroke of luck for the organization after Mike Hazen, a new General Manager, was hired. Lovullo had only played 48 games as an interim manager (28-20) for the Boston Red Sox prior to this job, as then incumbent John Farrell was suspended due to cancer.
The D-backs also had an inglorious 2016 season and lost 93 games. 2017 they won 93 victories under their new manager.”It’s something special,”said Lovullo:”There are many things going on that nobody knows about. But I know that a lot of people have done great things for us behind the scenes.
Molitor is the third manager to receive this award in the uniform of the Twins. He succeeds Tom Kelly (1991) and Ron Gardenhire (2010). The latter is also Molitor’s direct predecessor in office.
The Diamondbacks also had two other Manager of the Year award winners in their ranks: Bob Melvin won the award in 2007 and Kirk Gibson in 2011.
This article was published without prior view by the Major League Baseball.