My Official Ballot for the 2025 NL Manager of the Year

Voting for an award in baseball in the year 2025 is typically done with some assistance from statistics and various metrics that help quantify performance.

Before the advent of sabermetrics and the ever-growing standard of wins above replacement, scribes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America utilized a blend of batting average, home runs and runs batted in to evaluate position players on winning clubs to determine the Most Valuable Player. The value of a successful pitcher was summarily boiled down to his total number of wins and his earned run average.

The metrics have changed quite a bit since Ernie Lombardi won the NL MVP in 1938 for winning the batting title as a catcher, or 24-game winner LaMarr Hoyt was given the 1983 AL Cy Young Award despite having the highest ERA (3.66) in the award’s history.

However, there’s no statistic for quantifying the Manager of the Year. And that’s why this award can be so hard to predict and so fun to debate.

In a league where the Los Angeles Dodgers spend more than $400 million on payroll before the luxury tax and basically put their roster on autopilot during the regular season, Manager of the Year has always been about overachieving or carefully navigating chaos. 

What the Senior Circuit gave us this season was arguably the most compelling race in recent years because of the three distinct philosophical approaches to the modern game represented by three leading candidates who all led their clubs to October: a classic baseball lifer, a cerebral tactician, and a legendary veteran with a new lease on life.

The top three men who made their teams significantly better than the sum of their parts — or better than their payroll allowed — were Pat Murphy of the Milwaukee Brewers, Craig Counsell of the Chicago Cubs and Terry Francona of the Cincinnati Reds.

Had the voting for NL Manager of the Year gone out to five names — something the Rookie of the Year Award expanded to for the first time this year — Rob Thomson of the Philadelphia Phillies and Clayton McCullough of the Miami Marlins would have received my fourth and fifth-place votes, respectively. 

Philadelphia had its share of hiccups, but ultimately managed to do what was expected in order to win just one more game than in 2024 with the best NL roster east of the Mississippi. Though Miami finished under .500, McCullough got 79 wins out of a roster that easily could have lost 100 games with the lowest payroll in baseball. 

1. Pat Murphy, Milwaukee Brewers

The narrative for the Brewers this season should have been about regression. The club managed to win the NL Central in 2024 even after losing its ace (Corbin Burnes) and missing its All-Star outfielder (Christian Yelich) for half the season, but first-year manager Pat Murphy kept the ship on course. For those efforts, Murphy became the first in Milwaukee history to win NL Manager of the Year.

The loss of a cornerstone shortstop (Willy Adames) and an All-Star closer (Devin Williams) last offseason suggested the organization would come back to earth. Once again, Murphy proved that narratives are simply made to be shattered.

Expectations weren’t high for the Brewers entering the season. Yet, the 2025 squad won the division and set a franchise record with 97 wins, good for most in the sport. Not bad for a club operating in the bottom third of payrolls. 

Many of Murphy’s best contributors had fewer than two years of service time. Four different Brewers rookies received votes for the Jackie Robinson NL Rookie of the Year Award. One-third of starts from the rotation were made by pitchers with little to no big league experience. 

The credit has to go to Murphy and the culture he’s created in Milwaukee. Between preaching the “power of friendship” and his pocket pancakes, players performed better because of him. 

It’s unusual for a manager to win this award in consecutive seasons. Only Bobby Cox (2004-05) and Kevin Cash (2020-21) have ever done it. Considering the challenges Milwaukee has overcome with Murphy as its leader, he deserves to join that special group. 

2. Craig Counsell, Chicago Cubs

The Cubs can no longer be considered the lovable losers, especially after nine winning seasons in the last 11 years and a payroll north of $200 million. 

While the club added a perennial All-Star in Kyle Tucker via trade and took a leap of faith with Matthew Boyd in free agency after he made only eight starts the year prior, president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer opted to bring back much of the 2024 roster that missed the postseason by six games. 

What Chicago received in Craig Counsell in 2025 was what they were expecting last year when they signed the Milwaukee area native to a record-breaking five-year, $40 million pact. 

The nine-win turnaround was sparked not just by Tucker and Boyd, but by the emergence of Pete Crow-Armstrong. The 23-year-old became a sensation in his second year with Counsell. He was downright MVP-caliber before cooling down during the final two months of the season. 

An adequate, if not lackluster, rotation prevented the club from taking off and challenging the Brewers. The bullpen was equally as unreliable at times, but Counsell made it work until Hoyer brought in the reserves at the trade deadline. Daniel Palencia, whom Counsell rode to convert 22 of 25 save opportunities from late May to early September, had entered the year with only one career save — of the three-inning variety, at that.

Counsell wasn’t perfect. But in a season where large-market clubs like Philadelphia and Los Angeles did what was expected, and where New York and Atlanta failed to fulfill expectations, Chicago actually delivered in what was the best NL division and the only one to feature three playoff clubs.

3. Terry Francona, Cincinnati Reds

Had I not predicted the Reds to go to the postseason before the season began, Francona very well could have had my second-place vote. Projected to sniff something in the ballpark of 80 wins, Cincinnati was pushed to 83 victories thanks to its future Hall of Fame manager.

With only one player (Nick Martinez) earning over $10 million, Francona had a young squad of players hungry to establish themselves. There wasn’t a blockbuster deal at the trade deadline or multiple players having a career-defining season. Francona elevated his club by creating a culture an inexperienced clubhouse was lacking.

Francano instilled in his squad the value of showing up every day. Cincinnati used 53 players, the fewest for the franchise since 2019. The team’s best everyday player, Elly De La Cruz, appeared in all 162 games. The team’s ace, Hunter Greene, gritted through 19 starts despite lingering injury (right groin strain) issues while two rotationmates — Andrew Abbott and Nick Lodolo — stepped up to fill the void in a major way.

It may not have been pretty, especially losing on the final day of the regular season with a postseason berth on the line. But that’s not what defined the Reds. Francona navigated Cincinnati to the organization’s first playoff appearance since 2020 and the team’s first foray into October during a 162-game season since 2013.

Whether you expected Francona to have this success or not, he deserves the credit for achieving what several other managers were unable to accomplish. For that, he deserves recognition.