Sweet Lou is NL's Manager of the Year
Lou Piniella won he NL Manager of the Year award today. Always a curious award that seems to honor lowered expectations than actual managing skill. Nonetheless, Piniella takes the honor and will likely just dump it into the spare closet as I'm sure he couldn't care less after the playoff debacle.
He would have probably gotten my first place vote as I thought the Cubs were about an 88-win team to start the year, so the Cubs certainly exceeded my expactations. Tony LaRussa was the only other manager that probably deserved some first place votes, but he finished 5th in the voting.
Past Cubs managers to have received votes in the Manager of the Year award since it began in 1983, once again thanks to reader WISCGRAD
Name |
Year |
Place |
Lou Piniella |
2008 |
1st |
Lou Piniella |
2007 |
4th |
Dusty Baker |
2003 |
2nd |
Don Baylor |
2001 |
6th |
Jim Riggleman |
1998 |
3rd |
Jim Riggleman |
1995 |
5th |
Don Zimmer |
1989 |
1st |
Jim Frey |
1984 |
1st |
And I wrote this whole article without making a Dusty Baker joke. I have evolved
Lou and the Cubs have also retained their entire coaching staff from last year.
It's the last day to enter TCR's Free Agent Frenzy Contest for a chance to win Cait Murphy's Crazy '08. Here are my picks:
Abreu - Cleveland 2
Bradley - Cubs 1
Burnett - Atlanta 7
Burrell - Atlanta 4
Dempster - Cubs 15
Dunn - Toronto 3
Furcal - Cubs 8
Lowe - Yankees 9
Perez - Atlanta 6
Manny - Dodgers 12
K-rod - Mets 10
CC - Angels 13
Sheets - Houston 5
Teixeira - Yanks 14
Wood - Cubs 11
I don't think the Cubs will sign all of those players or the Braves will either. It's just that it's so wide open right now that I really don't have a solid guess on any one of them. So instead, I'm just trying to put the ball in play rather than swing for the fences and betting that the Cubs will sign SOME of those players.
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