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Des Martini
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim ExaminerDes Martini has covered professional and collegiate sports for AOL. He has reported on numerous teams and venues as a freelancer for various publications while living in southern California, Chicago and Boston.
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Great expectations: Mike Scioscia vs. Joe Maddon
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by Des Martini, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Examiner
One of the many fascinating sidebars to the Angels-Rays series is the matchup of two of the game's brightest managers, Mike Scioscia and Joe Maddon. The American League Manager of the Year Award will likely come down to a choice between the two skippers. Maddon, a former Angels bench coach under Scioscia, is the favorite at this point due to the amazing turnaround by the Rays. But has Maddon really outperformed Scioscia?
Annual expectations for the Rays were lower than those for a sequel to “You Don't Mess With the Zohan,” or any other Adam Sandler sequel for that matter. When your team has been the running joke of the AL since its inception in 1998, there is nowhere to go but up. Only once in that time did the Devil Rays win as many as 70 games. The reward for such utter futility was a stockpile of high draft picks and Tampa wisely held on to and developed them. So the law of averages dictated that the Rays would have to have a winning season eventually. Right? That’s not to take anything away from the outstanding work of Maddon and his staff; I am merely noting that leading a lousy team to its first winning season should not automatically entitle its manager to the award. Baseball media members, however, appear to disagree.
Baseball writers are easily the most arrogant group among the sportswriting community. They just love to show how much smarter they are than the average fan. Take 2006 when they bestowed the award on Joe Girardi whose managerial genius led the Marlins to a 78-84 record and a fourth place finish in the NL East. Girardi no doubt did wonders with a group of youngsters who were barely old enough to shave, but it is absolute insanity to give the award to a manager whose team finished with a losing record! But the baseball writers, most of whom probably didn’t watch an inning of Florida baseball that season, couldn’t wait to convince the world of their astounding clairvoyance. In the meantime, they passed over eight NL managers who had won more games, including Tony LaRussa, who led his Cardinals to a World Series championship after not garnering a single vote from the baseball media intelligentsia.
To be fair, all voting for regular season awards must be submitted before the start of the playoffs. It would make far more sense to give the manager’s award to the skipper who wins the World Series. But again, this would deny baseball writers the opportunity to show the great unwashed how smart they are.
Baseball writers are not alone in this myopia. How can NBA media folks explain that Phil Jackson, he of nine NBA championship titles, has exactly one NBA Coach of the Year trophy on his mantlepiece? Jackson deserved special consideration just for his ability to manage the massive egos of Rodman, Jordan, Pippen, Kobe, Shaq and many other stars. Here lies the problem: Writers believe it is easier to manage a team of superstars than a team of raw youngsters and perceived underachievers. I refuse to believe that this is always the case.
Look, if Maddon can fend off the mighty empires of Boston and New York and overcome injuries to his two best offensive performers, Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria, then he definitely deserves to be crowned as the AL’s top boss. And he definitely deserves bonus points for having the guts to bench occasional slacker B.J. Upton. But Scioscia should not be overlooked just because his team was expected to win the AL West. The Tigers and Indians were expected to run away from the pack in the AL Central, but someone forgot to remind the White Sox and Twins. And the all-knowing Joe Girardi and his overpriced Yankees, weighed down with deteriorating stars, are fading to black in the AL East.
Scioscia, whose team plays a similar aggressive, up-tempo style to that of the Rays, led his team away from the pack with an offense that was often anemic before the acquisition of Mark Teixeira. Vlad Guerrero looked 32 going on 52, and Garret Anderson’s swing could have been timed with an hourglass. Scioscia and his staff helped resurrect the careers of pitchers Ervin Santana and Darren Oliver, and overcame early injuries to starters John Lackey and Kelvim Escobar, the latter who won 18 games in 2007 but has spent this season on the disabled list.
Just because the Angels had more money to spend than the Rays did not make Scioscia’s job easier than Maddon’s, contrary to what the experts believe. With expectations come increased pressure to succeed; no one remembers those teams that lived up to (or down to) low expectations. In the end, Mike Scioscia deserves every bit of consideration for the AL Manager of the Year Award as does Joe Maddon.
Topics: Baseball , MLB , Angels
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