My awards picks for the Baseball Bloggers Alliance for AL Manager of the Year

Subway Squawkers is part of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, and for the second year, we voted our own version of end-of season awards. Here were my picks for the BBA's Connie Mack Award (Manager of the Year) for the American League, and how my picks stacked up against the rest of the BBA, as well as the Baseball Writers Association of America's official awards:

My choices:
1. Ron Washington, Texas Rangers
2. Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota Twins
3. Terry Francona, Boston Red Sox

I thought Washington did a great job with a team that was beset by bankruptcy and a team sale. Not only that, but given Washington's revelation that he failed a drug test, it could have been easy for him to lose control of the team. But he didn't. Thus, he deserved to win the award.

As for my other two choices, Gardenhire guided an injury-ridden team to the playoffs, and Francona kept his own injury-ridden team in the hunt until September.

My votes were identical to the New York Yankees Baseball Bloggers Alliance Chapter'schoices:

1st Place: Ron Washington, Texas Rangers – 26 points
2nd Place: Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota Twins – 24 points
3rd Place: Terry Francona, Boston Red Sox – 20 points

Please note that even a Yankee-based chapter had enough respect for what Terry Francona did with Boston to pick him third.

As a whole, the BBA voted the following choices for our Connie Mack Award:

1. Ron Washington, Texas (10) 74
2. Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota (7) 67
3. Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay (4) 35
4. Terry Francona, Boston (3) 20
5. Cito Gaston, Toronto 9
6. Buck Showalter, Baltimore 9
7. Joe Girardi, New York 2

However, the Baseball Writers Association of America saw things a little differently, making the following picks:

1. Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota Twins
2. Ron Washington, Texas Rangers
3. Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay Rays

Terry Francona finished fourth in the BBA voting, with Cito Gaston of the Toronto Blue Jays fifth, and Joe Girardi sixth.

What would be your choices? Tell us about it!

Where's Derek Jeter going to end up -- Cincinnati?

In a recent piece on Derek Jeter's contract negotiations with the Yankees, ESPN New York's Wally Matthews claims that the two parties are at odds, with Jeter supposedly turning down a generous three-year offer at $21 million a year.

Anyhow, Matthews quotes an anonymous source "inside the Yankees' hierarchy" who is "urging the front office to play hard ball with Jeter":

"Tell him the deal is three years at $15 million a year, take it or leave it," the person taking the hard-line approach said. "Wait him out and he'll wind up taking it. Where's he gonna go, Cincinnati?"

My guess is that the source is Hank Steinbrenner -- remember his line wondering whether A-Rod wanted to be a Yankee or a Toledo Mud Hen? And Big League Stew's David Brown thought the same thing as me about Hammerin' Hank being the source.

Yankee team president Randy Levine seemed to be speaking a tough stance, saying yesterday:

"Derek Jeter is a great Yankee and he's a great player," said Levine. "With that said and done, now is a different negotiation than 10 years ago."

Anyhow, shows you the Bizarro World we're in, that giving a 36-year-old shortstop $21 million a year is somehow deemed an insult, even though his actual value last year, according to Fangraphs, was just $9.8 million. (Incidentally, for those who make the inevitable comparison with the Yankees breaking the bank for A-Rod after 2007, Rodriguez had the best hitting season by a Yankee in 50 years; his value that season, according to Fangraphs, was $37.7 million. As ridiculous it was to give Rodriguez a ten-year contract, he was coming off two MVP seasons in the previous three years.)

It's going to be interesting to watch what happens. I've heard a lot of fans say "just give Jeter whatever he wants." But where does it end? If the captain is Mr. Team, Mr. Yankee, how much do the the Yankees have to overpay him in order to show that they value him?

I've also heard his 3,000 hit record, which he should achieve sometime in the first half of next year's season, as another reason to keep him on. That makes sense, but it is funny to hear the same people who said for years that Jeter was about intangibles and team, not about so-called "stat-padding" individual numbers, all of a sudden get excited about individual milestones with Jeter.

The conventional wisdom has been that the longer this contract negotiation drags out, the worse the Yankees will look. I think it will be the opposite. For one thing, what are Jeter's negotiating options -- is there some other team out there willing to pay him more than $21 million a year? Doubtful.

As for Cincinnati, given that the Reds declined a $4 million option on Orlando Cabrera, the 35-year-old shortstop, don't think that they're actually a realistic option for Jeter, either.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Looking for the next Ron Gardenhire

Managerial candidates Wally Backman and Jose Oquendo were middle infielders on the Mets in the '80s, as was Tim Teufel, now managing in the Mets' system. But the best choice among those Met '80s-era middle infielders is unavailable - he was just named AL Manager of the Year.

In nine years as Twins manager, Ron Gardenhire has finished first six times, second once and third twice. He finished under .500 only once, going 79-83 in 2007. Since the Twins traded Johan Santana, they have won at least 87 games all three seasons. All this with a team that had a limited payroll until 2010.

Gardenhire played for the Mets from 1981-1985. He was the starting shortstop in 1982 in an infield that included Backman, Dave Kingman and Hubie Brooks. The only other year Gardenhire got significant playing time was 1984, when he shared shortstop with Oquendo, who was on the Mets from 1983-1984.

If Backman, now one of four finalists, gets the job, that will mean that managers will have come from players who started games at three of the four infield positions on the 1984-85 Mets, since Ray Knight managed the Reds in 1996, 1997 and one game in 2003.

Who would have guessed that the only 80s-era Mets infield position with no managerial possibilities would be Keith Hernandez' first base?

If you count catcher as part of the infield, the mid-1980s Mets also produced a manager there. Sorry, Gary Carter, it was John Gibbons, who played briefly for the Mets in 1984 and 1986 and managed the Blue Jays from 2004-2008. Gibbons was both hired and fired by then-Toronto GM J.P. Ricciardi, who was also Gibbons' roommate in the Mets' farm system. Gibbons, now the Royals' bench coach, reportedly took himself out of consideration for the Mets' job last month.

If the new Mets' moneyball front office ends up hiring Teufel down the road, it would bring things full circle - when the Mets acquired Teufel from the Twins before the 1986 season, one of the players they gave up was Billy Beane.

Terry Collins and Gerald Ford

Metsblog has unearthed video of Mets' managerial candidate Terry Collins that is disturbing on a couple of levels. It took place on a notorious date in Mets' history and it made me think of an ill-fated campaign from the Ford administration.

The video shows Collins being introduced as manager of a Japanese team, the Orix Buffaloes, on October 19, 2006, which coincidentally was the day that things started to go sour for Omar Minaya's Mets - Game 7 against the Cardinals. The video is mostly in Japanese. We don't get much from Collins other than this:

"The goal is very, very simple. In English, W-I-N, it's spelled. That's my goal."

The video repeats the statement later, in case we needed a refresher on the spelling.

Collins doesn't come across all that well in the video, but considering that he is addressing a group of people for whom English is not their first language, it's not fair to use this clip to judge him on this side of the Pacific.

Overall, I'm not all that excited about Collins, or the other apparent frontrunner, Bob Melvin. It was just a few months ago that Melvin was said to be the boring in-house choice to replace Jerry Manuel. It may not be fair to Melvin, but Sandy Alderson needs to go in another direction if he wants to establish from the start that he's his own man.

As for Collins, there's a lot of talk that he has inspired player revolts at places where he's managed. But when a leader of one of those revolts was Mo Vaughn, it's hard to get too worked up over that.

But if Collins does become the Mets' manager, I hope he leaves W-I-N behind. I know I'm dating myself, but it made me think of President Gerald Ford's 1974 campaign to "Whip Inflation Now." Ford unveiled his strategy on October 8, 1974, complete with red and white "WIN" buttons.

As it turned out, inflation was not whipped at that time. The following month, Ford's Republican Party, still reeling from the August resignation of Richard Nixon, failed to WIN at the polls, losing 49 seats in the House of Representatives.

No manager should need to announce that his goal is to W-I-N. What else would his goal be - to H-O-P-E F-O-R T-H-E B-E-S-T?

*

Our condolences go out to Alderson on the loss of his father.

Image from Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum.

On the "Moneyball" crew taking their talents to Flushing -- and to the movies

I haven't given the Mets enough grief as of late. That changes right now, Squawker Jon.

First off, how many people from the old "Moneyball" regime is Sandy Alderson going to import to the Mets? Is Scott Hatteberg going to get a job on the team, too?

Squawker Jon wrote that I said:

Squawker Lisa compared the front office big three of Sandy Alderson, Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi to the Miami Heat's dream team, lamenting that there was no ESPN special in which they would announce that they were taking their talents to Flushing.

Well, I was a wee bit more sarcastic there than you give me credit for, Jon, especially given that I'm on record as thinking Ricciardi is way overrated! At any rate, at least your new GM getting the band back together keeps people from talking too much about that Mets clubhouse manager. What's the deal with that Charlie Samuels dude? What did he do to make Jeff Francouer tip him $50,000 -- wash his laundry especially nice? And how about K-Rod living at this guy's house? That's just wacky.

Back to "Moneyball" -- the subject of the book got me thinking about the new "Moneyball" movie. I couldn't find out who was playing Alderson or Ricciardi in the movie, but I did see that DePodesta's character, who will be played by Jonah Hill (!) in the film, has a different name now -- Peter Brand. DePodesta told Yahoo Sports he was uncomfortable not with Hill, but with the way the script depicted him, saying "I didn’t feel comfortable with my name being attached to a fictitious character."


Maybe it's just as well -- it's not like Jonah Hill looked anything remotely like DePodesta, anyway. DePodesta played football and baseball at Harvard, while the most athetic thing Hill looks like he's ever done is maybe a rousing game of beer pong or something.

According to the IMDB, Jorge Posada is in the movie, portrayed by Sergio Garcia click here to see his photo and bio, and no, I don't think he looks all that much like Posada, either.



Philip Seymour Hoffman is playing Art Howe. Giving that Hoffman seems to play an odious character in virtually every movie he's in, if I were Howe, I'd be calling my lawyer right now!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Brian Cashman sez he's "proud" that Derek Jeter got another Gold Glove

I saw Brian Cashman said this Thursday night, regarding Derek Jeter winning that undeserved Gold Glove this week:

Cashman was asked what he thought about Derek Jeter winning another Gold Glove earlier this week, along with Robinson Cano and Mark Teixeira. "We're proud," Cashman said. "I wish that Alex [Rodriguez] won it too, so we could have the whole infield do it. But that's an awesome accomplishment, to have [Jeter], Cano and Tex [win]. I'm proud of all those guys. Derek's been steady for us at that position, and we're really proud that he added another one to the fold."

Why be proud? Was Jethro Tull and their management proud when they won the Best Heavy Metal Band Grammy over Metallica? If they were, they shouldn't have been; they didn't deserve it.

Speaking of awards ceremonies, the Oscars have seen their share of great actors winning for not-so-great roles, like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, and Paul Newman in The Color of Money. But people didn't begrudge them for winning, because they never won the Academy Awards the times they really deserved to. In Jeter's case, he had already won four Gold Gloves. Did he really need a fifth?

And yes, I think Cashman is also incorrect in saying he wished A-Rod should have won a Gold Glove this year. Alex didn't deserve it, either. What's next? Is Cash going to suggest that Jorge Posada should have won a Gold Glove this season, too? Good grief.

In "Saturday Night Fever," one of my all-time favorite movies, John Travolta's Tony Manero character and his partner, played by Karen Lynn Gorney, win first price in the dance contest at the disco. But Manero has such a strong sense of fair play, he gives the prize money and the trophy to the couple he thinks really should have won the dance contest. Guess that type of thing will never happen in real life!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Different Hot Stove for Mets

For most of the past few years, the Mets' offseason has focused on which big-name player they can acquire via free agency or trade. This year, though, is going to be different. The Mets have already made most of their big-name acquisitions - in the front office.

Squawker Lisa compared the front office big three of Sandy Alderson, Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi to the Miami Heat's dream team, lamenting that there was no ESPN special in which they would announce that they were taking their talents to Flushing.

But Alderson did appear on SNY's "Mets Hot Stove Report" tonight, and I liked what I heard, except for the part about him planning to meet with Luis Castillo. It's one thing to talk to Carlos Beltran about waiving his no-trade clause and his willingness to play right field. But what is there to talk to Castillo about, other than telling him goodbye?

All the sabermetrics in the world can't make 23 equal 25. And keeping Castillo and Oliver Perez on the roster means the Mets are playing with a 23-man roster. It makes sense to see if Perez can somehow regain some value, though he's already off to a bad start in Mexico. Perez had great potential at one point and he is still a lefty under 30. If the Mets cut him loose, someone will take a chance on him for the minimum salary. But who's going to pick up Castillo?

But while the Castillo and Perez situations are still unchanged from the last regime, it was refreshing to hear Alderson say that the Mets need to find more starting pitchers for the rotation. The same was true last year, and everyone knew it except for Omar Minaya, who went into the regular season with John Maine and Perez holding down two rotation spots.

I especially liked Alderson saying it was important to have lots of good players in the farm system to create depth for the major-league club. Seems obvious, but not to the previous regime, particularly in 2009 when triple-A Buffalo seemed to consists mostly of retreads in their mid-thirties. Things did improve last year, but there is still a long way to go.

I also like that Alderson is interviewing plenty of candidates to be manager. There doesn't seem to be the same urgency of a few weeks ago to find a big name and/or someone with personality. The Mets already have that in Alderson.

So far, this different sort of offseason is off to a good start.