Alex Cora guided the Red Sox to a franchise-record and Major League Baseball-best 108 wins in his first regular season as Boston’s manager. The Red Sox won the American League East.
It earned Cora a new contract with Boston but not AL Manager of the Year honors, as the voters — members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America — instead sided with Athletics skipper Bob Melvin, who led Oakland to 97 regular-season victories and an AL wild-card spot.
Jim Bowden found the voting to be “a joke.”
The A’s shocked a lot of people with their success this season despite having the lowest Opening Day payroll in MLB, but Bowden, a former Cincinnati Reds general manager and current MLB analyst, still believes Cora deserved the award.
“There’s no intelligence behind the voting here,” Bowden said this week on CBS Sports HQ, per MassLive.com. “Nobody looks behind the scenes and says, ‘Which manager was good at motivating? What manager was the best at implementing analytics? What manager was best with his eyes during games to make adjustments? Who handled the pitching staff the best? Who was able to think outside the box? Who shifted better? Who did better on appeals of instant replay?’ Nobody measures that? We just give the award to whatever team we don’t think is going to get in?”
Playoff success doesn’t matter, as voting takes place before the MLB postseason. Thus, the Red Sox winning the World Series and the A’s losing to the New York Yankees in the AL Wild Card Game are irrelevant in this debate.
Bowden doesn’t care, though. He’s basing his argument solely on the regular season and still feels Cora got robbed despite the Red Sox, unlike the A’s, entering the season with championship aspirations.
“Alex Cora was the best manager in baseball. He checked all the boxes,” Bowden said, as transcribed by MassLive.com. “(Tampa Bay’s) Kevin Cash was second-best. (Milwaukee’s) Craig Counsell was third-best. Brian Snitker and Bob Melvin were certainly in the top six or seven managers. I’m happy they both won the award. They’re great people. They’re great baseball guys, but they weren’t the best managers in 2018.”
Melvin received 18 first-place votes, 19 second-place votes and one third-place vote for 121 points. Cora, meanwhile, received seven first-place votes and 79 points total.
