NEW YORK — Buck Showalter and Matt Williams won the Manager of the Year awards Tuesday, turning a Beltway double play.
Showalter took the American League prize for the third time after guiding Baltimore to its first division title in 17 years, and Williams snagged the NL honor following his first season as a big league skipper with Washington.
Showalter received 25 of 30 first-place votes and 132 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He’s established a unique pattern of winning once a decade following victories with the New York Yankees in 1994 and Texas in 2004.
“I won’t be doing it 10 years from now,” Showalter said on the MLB Network telecast.
Williams, who played under Showalter in Arizona from 1998-2000, led the Nationals to an NL-best 96 wins. He got 18 first-place votes and 109 points, joining Houston’s Hal Lanier (1986), San Francisco’s Dusty Baker (1993) and Florida’s Joe Girardi (2006) as the only men to win in their first seasons as a major league manager.
“This is an organizational award as far as I’m concerned,” Williams said on a conference call. “It’s a testament to how the organization has built itself.”
Mike Scioscia of the Los Angeles Angels was second in the AL with four firsts and 61 points, and Kansas City’s Ned Yost finished third with 41 points. Seattle’s Lloyd McClendon followed with 29 points.
The 58-year-old Showalter piloted the Orioles to a 96-66 record and their first AL East crown since 1997 despite playing large chunks of the season without All-Stars Chris Davis, Manny Machado and Matt Wieters.
Voting took place before the playoffs, when Baltimore swept Detroit in the Division Series and then was swept by Kansas City in the AL Championship Series.
Duquette voted executive of year
PHOENIX — Baltimore’s Dan Duquette was voted The Sporting News baseball executive of the year.
Duquette also won the award in 1992 as general manager of the Montreal Expos. Duquette became the fourth Baltimore winner after Harry Dalton (1970), Hank Peters (1979, ‘83) and Roland Hemond (1989).
He received nine votes in balloting announced Monday as the annual general managers’ meetings began, one more than Kansas City GM Dayton Moore. The Los Angeles Angels’ Jerry Dipoto received five, followed by Oakland’s Billy Beane (four) and Washington’s Mike Rizzo (three). The New York Yankees’ Brian Cashman, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Ned Colletti, Milwaukee’s Doug Melvin and Seattle’s Jack Zduriencik received one vote each.
The award is voted on by 33 major league executives.
By wire sources
