New York Yankees: Aaron Boone robbed of Manager of the Year award
The New York Yankees won more games and advanced further in the postseason than in 2018. So why wasn’t Aaron Boone awarded AL Manager of the Year award?
When we look back on the 2019 MLB season for the New York Yankees, we’ll remember as the season in which the team set a record with the number of injured players and still managed to reach game 7 of the ALCS.
On top of that, the team also hit more home runs than they did in 2018 when the broke the MLB record for homers hit by a team in a single season. They also won three more games than they did last season, won the AL East for the first time since 2012, and advanced further in the postseason than they did in 2018.
Despite all of this, the Baseball Writers of America decided to award Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli with the AL Manager of the Year award.
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Now, don’t get me wrong, Baldelli had a heck of rookie campaign as the manager of the Twins. His team set the new HR record for a team in a single season while also winning 23 more games than they did last season.
At the same time, Minnesota plays in a division with two 100-loss teams in the worst team in baseball, the Detroit Tigers and the Kansas City Royals. Also, the AL Central has an overall worse W-L% than does the AL East.
What’s more, they were also swept in the ALDS by the – wait for it – Yankees.
According to Lindsay Adler, Aaron Boone and Baldelli “received the same number of first-place votes,’ Rocco, on the other hand, received more second-place votes. What is this, the electoral college?
How Aaron Boone didn’t get the award completely baffles me. Just look at an abridged list of the type of players not available to Boone for large portions of the season:
- Aaron Judge – missed two months
- Luis Severino – only started three regular-season games
- Giancarlo Stanton – only played in 18 games
- Dellin Betances – only appeared in one game
- Didi Gregorius – only played 82 games
- Aaron Hicks – only played 59 games
- Gary Sanchez – only played 106 games
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If improving the New York Yankees by three regular-season games and taking your team to game 7 of the ALCS having had this level of bad luck in the regular season doesn’t win you the Manager of the Year award, I don’t know what will