For the second consecutive season, Pat Murphy and Stephen Vogt have been named the Managers of the Year. Murphy received 27 of 30 first-place votes in the National League. The American League tally was closer, but Vogt picked up 17 first-place nods to keep his title.
Both skippers have won the award in their first two seasons on the job. They’ve each led a small-market franchise to a Central division title in consecutive seasons. Milwaukee won 97 games and played .500 or better ball in every month after starting the season 0-4 in the final few days of March. The Brewers coasted to another division title and held off the Phillies for the top seed in the Senior Circuit.
The Brewers seamlessly integrated a few quality rookies along the way. Caleb Durbin, Isaac Collins, Chad Patrick and Jacob Misiorowski all made strong contributions in their debut campaigns. Milwaukee also weathered a series of early-season rotation injuries behind Freddy Peralta. A mid-April trade for Quinn Priester paid massive dividends. The offense, meanwhile, trailed only the Yankees and Dodgers in scoring despite the free agent departure of Willy Adames.
Milwaukee knocked off the Cubs in a five-game Division Series. They were swept by the Dodgers in the NLCS and are still searching for their first trip to the Fall Classic since 1982. Awards voting takes place at the end of the regular season, so the postseason performance is irrelevant.
While the Brewers were well positioned to make the playoffs by the end of June, the Guardians got in via a late-season run that surely surprised even the Cleveland front office. The Guards were deadline sellers and seemed more or less finished once Emmanuel Clase was placed on administrative leave. A ten-game losing streak dropped them as low as eight games under .500 shortly before the All-Star Break, and they trailed Detroit by as much as 15.5 games in the division.
The Guards went 14-13 in August before reeling off a 20-7 record in September to steal a division title. They never led the AL Central by more than one game but had the edge when it mattered, finishing the season at 88-74. That included a 5-1 showing against the Tigers in the final two weeks of the regular season. Detroit wound up getting the last laugh in October, though, going into Cleveland and bouncing the Guards in the Wild Card Series.
Murphy appeared first or second on all but one ballot in the NL. Cincinnati’s Terry Francona and Philadelphia’s Rob Thomson also received at least one-first place vote. They finished second and third, respectively. Craig Counsell, Clayton McCullough, Torey Lovullo and Mike Shildt all received votes. Toronto’s John Schneider was a close-runner up in the Junior Circuit. He received 10 first-place votes. Seattle’s Dan Wilson (the other finalist) and Boston’s Alex Cora also had at least one first-place nod. A.J. Hinch and Joe Espada received votes.
Full vote tallies courtesy of the BBWAA. Images via Imagn Images.
Way to go Murph! Good job Vogt as well. 🤙🏽🍻🍻
Love Pat Murphy. Gained a lot of respect for him during the NLCS press conferences.
Cheers Sal. Congrats on your chip… again. Share the wealth one of these years bruv! Geez man 😅
🙂 Thanks. It always anybody’s ballgame, Gwynning. Your side nearly made it in ’24. That last game could’ve gone either way. LAD making a habit of these heart attack finishes. What a series this latest one was. Just great baseball.
Fantastic ******* Series, bro! I’m kinda always happy when the NL West wins it all; validates the rough seas of the Division for sure! I’m never a sore loser but man it’d be sensational to finally wear the belt, haha! Fwiw, my parents and essentially the entire fringe of my family were all born and raised Pasadena, Alta Dena, Santa Monica, et al soooooooo I must hear about “it” 1,000x every offseason. Anyway, I love good baseball; mad respect to Toronto as well. Cheers bub, go Pads 🍻🤙🏽
Big win for pocket pancakes.
O’s fan here, so I don’t get to watch CLE with the same frequency, but Vogt is a guy I’d play my heart out for with no problems. The award seems very well deserved.
I was thinking Francona and Dan Wilson. Time for a recount
Vogt ?? Detroit gave the division away.
Weak division and a -6 run differential lol
Inwould have gone wilson or schneider.
Schneider is terrible, remember game 5 of ALCS? That is a fairly accurate snapshot of how he manages a bullpen
Yes but vogt couldnt grt his team past the wildcard.
Game 5 of the ALCS didnt keep the jays from the world series.
Anyways. I would have taken wilson before Schneider and vogt.
This vote is taken before playoff games. So those results are not meaningful here. Takes some kind of manager to take the worst hitting team baseball, a team that loses their closer and a starter to a gambling probe to a division title regardless of the failure of Detroit and Houston. Imagine if he had any kind of talent to work with outside of Ramirez
Wah?
Vote is taken the day after the regular season ends
That is correct.
So outplaying your Pythagorean is a bad thing now?
Right. A -6 run differential. He got that group to win a division that they had no business winning.
Strong point for being an excellent manager, I would think…
Or should have gotten more out of their hitters? So there was no need to have to come back to scrape by a mediocre tigers team lol
Vogt’s roster looked more like the land of misfit toys than a few AAA teams. There’s always other good managers to put forward, although I think Vogt was a worthy choice.
Vogt is such a good manager some of his pitchers are facing 65 years in prison
OOF
if you can win despite that, kudos
#gotheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeem
Oof. Now that’s a kick in the b___s.
You can’t keep your employees from doing stupid s***, but you can fire their a** after.
Wow. I was 100% sure Schneider would get this one.
On the NL side, Murphy probably deserved it this year but I thought Tito had an outside chance for steering the lowly Reds to a playoff berth, being a “respected veteran” manager and because they typically don’t like to give MOY to the same guy two years in a row.
The Guardians and Brewers will have to have historic regular seasons next year for Vogt and Murphy to win it a third time.
As a sox fan, I thought Schnieder had it as well. Murphy was easy choice for NL>
Not really.. if both teams are ravaged by injuries and their best players are hurt and they win over 90 games again, then they’ll repeat. Murphy won it over the fact that his best offensive producer from 2024 wasnt on the team and his starting pitching consisted of a bunch of unknowns except for Peralta
Murphy won it because the Brewers had the best record in MLB even thought on paper probably half a dozen teams had better rosters.
It seems odd to me that they won again despite both being excellent managers. I can’t really disagree though. Just surprised, but not a bad surprise.
Toronto got snubbed from basically every offseason award on and off the field. Crazy for a team not many people expected much from let alone to get to game 7 of the world series. I guess these awards will sell more in American markets and its all about the Benjamins.
The voting takes place before any playoff games are played.
The awards are for the regular season.
Still, you may have a legitimate gripe regardless.
I understand that. I was just pointing out the contrast between expectation and result which to me is what the award should be about. After seeing it explained by US media, it’s actually a “who did more with less” award so they should have a thrift shop sponsor it next year maybe because that’s not what makes the best manager imo.
Listen, Cleveland’s accomplishment this year was miraculous. Toronto had a great year, certainly, but would Schneider have performed as well as Vogt did in similar circumstances? We’ll never know, but everything went wrong in Cleveland and they still managed to win a division. It wasn’t a knock on Schneider, it was more, “How the hell did Cleveland win with THAT team?”
There was no way the Guardians should have been in the playoff this year. Part of the reason why they did make it was because they went to a six man rotation and took five back end starters to make one of the leagues best. If only he could learn how to use his bullpens in the playoffs!!!
Because Cleveland beat them five out of six times in the final two weeks, games they HAD to have. You can’t back in to a division championship when you’re the team that steamrolls who you are running down. CLE went 8-5 against DET and generally outmaneuverd the smartest guy in the room (AJ Hinch) until CLE’s pen ran out of gas in the deciding game of the Wild Card Series.
I think that vote, over the last two playoff runs, has exposed his bullpen way too much. There is research that says the more you see relievers the better by average you have off of them. I think he needs to one have a healthy errand decent bullpen and two I think he needs to make sure he doesn’t overuse them next playoff run
Vogt isn’t doing anything any other manager does; when things get hairy, they lean on their favorite guys. Francona was horrible at extending his circle of trust too.
Sure, it helps hitters to see pitchers more than once, but you know what helps them even more than that? Facing pitchers who are flat worn out. Time to start trusting more guys in high leverage spots, and if that means not feeling you have to lock down every regular season win in front of you in order to develop a broader array of options in the postseason, so be it.
Dear Justin Guerriero of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Your 1st, second and 3rd place votes for NL manager of the year went to Francona, McCullough and Counsell? And no Pat Murphy?
No disrespect to Tito, but Counsell whose team underachieved during the second half? Why not vote for Derek Shelton while you’re at it?
Counsell is the most overrated manager in all of baseball.
Schneider should have won the AL award – no brainer.
Is this the first time both MOY’s have repeat winners?
I’d say both well deserved.
Catchers make good managers!
Whatever you say at this point
is useless! Vogt got the Votes!
Who votes for this? Who had someone other than Murphy as 1st?
If ever a MOTY vote should have been unanimous, this was it.
That being said…. There was one lunatic that didn’t vote for Ichiro for the HOF. 🤷🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🙃
No business winning, youre right. Detroit gave it away.
Dont get me wrong Cleveland did their job and won games but they should have never been so far back that it required a miraculous finish to beat a mediocre tigers team.
Weak division.
Wilson should have won.
Bogus, just like the WS, should have been Schneider hands down! Worst to first,and the guy from Cleveland that did jack wins it,give me a break!
Schneider deserved it as much as Vogt, but it was an acknowledgment of CLE winning a division after being down by 15 1/2 games, something that never happened before, and moreover, doing it with a mediocre club (and that’s being kind) and under the cloud of gambling suspicions.
Perhaps I’d have more sympathy for Schneider had I not watched him let Alejandro Pena hit away (into a double play) with the tying run on third in Game 7. Play to keep the game going, skip. (And yes, I know this is a regular season award.)
*Kirk. Alejandro KIRK. Apologies to Jays fans.
Murphy and Brewers are 2025’s “Feel Good” story. However, I believe Dave Roberts should have been nominated and crowned the winner. Pretty much never had his starting rotation until mid-August. Mookie, Freddy and Teoscar’s 2025 numbers didn’t match 2024. Muncy hurt a lot. Pages was an early season stud but faded late and was a non-factor in the playoffs save for his WS-saving catch. Never had a true closer all year until the playoffs. Edmond hurt a lot. Conforto was a zero. Only Will Smith was consistent for most of the year, but he even was nicked up late.
How John Schneider isn’t the manager of the year is criminal.
“Meanwhile” should START the sentence, not come in the middle between commas.