My Official Ballot for 2024 NL Manager of the Year Award
A look into our ballot for NL Manager of the Year, and why Pat Murphy was clearly deserving of winning the award for the 2024 season.
Evaluating the Manager of the Year is a process much more limited than that of the best rookie, pitcher and overall player. The latter awards offer copious amounts of on-field numbers while the win-loss record of a manager is the only objective statistic.
There are other figures that show the amount of challenges and overturned calls, not to mention ejections, but these have virtually zero relevance on evaluating the person on the top step of the dugout.
In the previous four years of the National League Manager of the Year, only once did the winner actually finish first in their division, let alone have the best win-loss record. Skip Schumaker of the Miami Marlins won in 2023 with an 84-78 record that sat third-place in the NL East.
(The NL MOY was once awarded to Joe Girardi, also of the Marlins, with a losing record in 2006.)
Of the 37 seasons in which an AL and NL manager could have been selected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) for winning 100 games since its creation in 1983, less than a third of the time was the honor bestowed upon a skipper reaching the century mark.
To put it another way, winning the most games in your league does not guarantee hardware for a manager.
The most subjective of the four major BBWAA awards, Manager of the Year is equal parts exceeding expectations and handling headaches (aka responsibilities) with elegance.
If it wasn’t obvious enough how different this prize can be evaluated, six different managers received a first-place vote in 2023.
The following is my ballot and thought process for the 2024 NL Manager of the Year:
1. Pat Murphy, Milwaukee Brewers
The odds were stacked against the Brewers winning a second consecutive NL Central title in 2024, something the club had never done before. No team lost more invaluable on-field and off-the-field personnel during the 2023-24 offseason than Milwaukee.
Gone was local-boy-done-good Craig Counsell, the winningest manager in franchise history.
Their ace, Corbin Burnes, was traded away while another multi-time All-Star, Brandon Woodruff, was unavailable following shoulder surgery. These were one of the many reasons some projected the Brew Crew to battle with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NL Central basement.
To complicate Murphy’s job even further, Christian Yelich missed 28 of the first 101 games before requiring a back surgery that ended his season abruptly. Devin Williams had a stress fracture in his back, causing the reigning NL Reliever of the Year to miss the first 104 games of the year.
The winners of the NL East (Philadelphia Phillies) and NL West (Los Angeles Dodgers) in 2024 weren’t much of a surprise since they had two of the largest payrolls in their league. But for the 21st-ranked club in payroll to accomplish so much even after the loss of such prominent players was astonishing.
Murphy’s calm and comedic personality steadied the ship all season long. Milwaukee never fell behind first place more than 2.0 games. After a win on April 30 to take over the lead in the NL Central, they never had to look up in the standings once.
On June 8, rookie Jackson Chourio was batting .209 with a .589 OPS. Murphy stuck by the 20-year-old, who batted .306 with an .888 OPS the rest of the way. In the process, Chourio became the youngest player to ever reach 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases in the same season.
The second-youngest offense in the NL had more breakouts in 2024. Brice Turang, 24, stole 50 bases and won the NL Gold Glove Award at second base and the NL Platinum Glove for best overall defender in the Senior Circuit.
William Contreras, 26, further cemented himself as one of the top catchers in the game with 23 homers and 92 RBI, good for his second-straight NL Silver Slugger Award.
The first-year big league manager becomes the first ever recipient of the Manager of the Year Award for the franchise, who were shut out from 1969-1997 as a member of the American League.
2. Mike Shildt, San Diego Padres
Ever since the Padres signed Manny Machado ahead of the 2019 season and debuted 20-year-old superstar Fernando Tatis Jr., it seemed like only a matter of time before the Friars would become a powerhouse. Despite two postseason appearances in five years, San Diego had just as many losing campaigns to show for their impressive roster.
Enter Shildt, who worked on the Padres coaching staff the past two seasons under Bob Melvin. The 2019 NL Manager of the Year with the St. Louis Cardinals picked up where he left off with San Diego and took his club to the playoffs for the fourth time in as many full-seasons.
Jurickson Profar and Robert Suarez both became first-time All-Stars in their 30s. Jackson Merrill jumped over Triple-A to make his Major League debut in Korea at age-20, changing positions from shortstop to center field where he played five times in 200 games in the minors.
Though he fell short in NL Rookie of the Year voting, Merrill was the Padres’ MVP and should receive such recognition.
There were prolonged spells on the injured list for Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts and Ha-Seong Kim, not to mention 35 combined starts for Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish.
And Shildt not only survived more roster overhaul with the trade of Juan Soto that netted five new players — prospect Drew Thorpe was later included in the acquisition of Dylan Cease — but he and his clubhouse thrived to win 93 games, second-most in franchise history.
3. Carlos Mendoza, New York Mets
Say what you will about the highest payroll in the sport, but the lineup card Mendoza filled out in 2024 was not one that earned $300 million.
Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander were paid by New York nearly $60 million, while they pitched out in the AL West following trades at the 2023 deadline. James McCann made $8 million with the Baltimore Orioles courtesy of the Mets, too.
Regardless, when Mendoza and his roster of kindly-paid players fell to 24-35 on June 2, only a pair of 100-loss clubs — the Colorado Rockies and the Miami Marlins — stood in the way of Steve Cohen’s club being the worst team in the league.
Mendoza managed to guide the Mets to a 65-38 record (.631 winning percentage, 102-win pace) from that point on to slip into the postseason on the final day of the regular season. He pieced together a bullpen that went an MLB-best 28-16 in one-run games. The button-pushing of the first-year skipper even garnered 41 comeback wins.
Francisco Lindor had his best year with the club, an MVP-caliber campaign that would be honored in most years that didn’t contain a certain Shohei Ohtani. Mark Vientos emerged as a future star with 27 home runs in 111 games. Several in the starting rotation had tremendous seasons, none of whom is expected to receive a single Cy Young Award vote.
For what it’s worth, had the voting for NL Manager of the Year gone out to five names, Rob Thomson of the Philadelphia Phillies and Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers would have received my fourth and fifth-place votes, respectively.
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