Joe Maddon named AL Manager of the Year

Nov 12, 2008 - 11:40 PM NEW YORK (Ticker) -- Joe Maddon, who guided the Tampa Bay Rays to one of the most dramatic turnarounds in baseball history, was named the American League's Manager of the Year on Wednesday.

Maddon managed a Rays' ballclub that went a franchise-best 97-65 en route to a surprising first-place finish in the AL East Division.

Tampa Bay carried that unexpected success into the postseason, reaching the World Series for the first time in club history.

It was an amazing improvement from the previous season, when the Rays went 66-96 to finish last in the AL East.

Maddon, 54, was a near-unanimous winner, receiving 27 out of a possible 28 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

Maddon collected 138 total points, well ahead of Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, who was given the other first-place vote and 58 points.

Mike Scioscia, who managed the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to a major league-best 100-62 record, finished third.

But the AL's best managerial job this season clearly was turned in by Maddon, who presided over the worst team in the majors for two consecutive years before it all came together this season.

Maddon's patience and calm during the tough times gave him the respect of his players during the good times, and all of Tampa Bay's bad seasons and high draft picks finally began to bear fruit this season as the Rays won the AL pennant.

"When you go into spring training, you never want to walk into that door and just preach mediocrity to your group," Maddon said in a conference call from Europe. "You always want to preach to be the best, so being that it was my third year and how we concluded the second year, that gave us a lot of hope going into next season."

Maddon guided Tampa Bay not only to its first playoff appearance but to its first winning record despite playing in the most competitive division in the majors.

"What I thought at the time we hired him was that he was the right guy for our team at that time," Rays vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. "We also had strong conviction that he can ultimately grow into one of the best managers in the game.

"He's got a great mind, he's a great communicator, and he's been remarkably consistent since the first day of spring training in 2006, and that's extremely difficult to do in an environment so full of emotion."

Featuring young position players such as third baseman Evan Longoria - the AL Rookie of the Year - and center fielder B.J. Upton along with star pitchers James Shields and Scott Kazmir, the Rays improved their season record by 31 games.

It marked the third-biggest single-season improvement in baseball history, and it came from a team that sported the second-lowest payroll in the majors.

After edging out the 2007 champion Boston Red Sox by two games for the division title, Tampa Bay ousted the Chicago White Sox in four games in the AL Division Series.

The Rays then shocked the baseball world in the ALCS, where they upset the Red Sox in seven games.

"It was all there for us, it was just a matter of time - we just expedited it a bit," Maddon said. "I thought we had a shot to get to the playoffs this year, and we did. To get to the World Series? Like I said, I'd be lying to you if I thought that was a situation that we could've realized at the beginning of the year, but we did.

"We knew we were better (than last year). We just didn't know how much better. And then, as the season went on, we thought that we can do this, and people started to believe."

The hard-fought series with the Red Sox may have emotionally wiped out the Rays, who were defeated by the Philadelphia Phillies in five games in the World Series.