BBA AL Connie Mack Award Ballot 2011

After a full year of writing nonsense, the Baseball Blogger Alliance has yet to kick us out and still encourages us to vote on stuff. And not just things we know like "how awesome does that dog look wearing a hat." Which, of course, the answer is always "very." First up is the Connie Mack award for manager of the year.

1. Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay
I think Maddon is one of the smartest managers in baseball despite his time in Anaheim when Mike Scioscia would smack him with a ruler every time he read something about sabermetrics. Maddon has his share of goofs but, for the most part, he helps his team win games instead of blowing them. It doesn't hurt that he's backed by one of the smarter organizations in baseball. With a full year of Desmond Jennings and Matt Moore next season, Maddon might want to get comfortable in this spot.

2. Joe Girardi, New York
Resident Yankee enthusiast, Derwood, pitched Girardi for top manager. I'm sure he was making a reasonable argument but all I heard was a pencil scratching Derek Jeter into the leadoff spot.

3. Phillip Seymore Hoffman, Hollywood
20 wins in a row and he had to deal with Brad Pitt and the nerd from Superbad?

3. Jim Leyland, Detroit
Jose Valverde didn't blow a save all season long. That's just good bullpen management.

3. Terry Francona, Boston
I had Francona as my top manager last year. And sure, they didn't make the playoffs again and had an epic collapse but I still think he's a great manager. He won't be unemployed for very long unless John Lackey is his publicist. Francona taught Jacoby Ellsbury to hit 30 home runs. Prove me wrong. Despite the end of the season debacle, let's not forget they rebounded from a 0-53 start this year.

BBA Announces Washington, Black Win Connie Mack Award

WASHINGTON, BLACK WIN CONNIE MACK AWARD

Ron Washington of the Texas Rangers and Bud Black of the San Diego Padres were named winners of the Connie Mack Award by the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, noting them as the best managers in their respective leagues for 2010.

Washington, who weathered a drug controversy in spring training, led Texas to their fifth divisional title since 1994 and their first since 1999. While the voting was based on his regular season accomplishments, Washington also guided his team to their first ever postseason series victory when they eliminated the Tampa Bay Rays in five games in the American League Divisional Series.

Washington received ten first place votes in route to accumulating 74 total points. He edged out Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, who received 67 points.

In the National League, Black’s guidance of a Padres team almost universally expected to finish last to first place most of the summer helped him edge Dusty Baker of the Cincinnati Reds by the slimmest of margins. The fact that the Padres fell just short of the playoffs while the Reds won the NL Central helped lead to the tight race. Black garnered nine first place selections and 53 total points to Baker’s seven first place nods and 51 total points.

The complete voting results are as follows (first place votes in parenthesis):

American League

Ron Washington, Texas (10) 74

Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota (7) 67

Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay (4) 35

Terry Francona, Boston (3) 20

Cito Gaston, Toronto 9

Buck Showalter, Baltimore 9

Joe Girardi, New York 2

National League

Bud Black, San Diego (9) 53

Dusty Baker, Cincinnati (7) 51

Bobby Cox, Atlanta (2) 33

Bruce Bochy, San Francisco (3) 29

Charlie Manuel, Philadelphia (1) 27

Brad Mills, Houston 3

Mike Quade, Chicago 2

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of this writing, the organization consists of 224 blogs spanning all 30 major league squads as well as general baseball writing.

The BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into “chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted. The blog chapters that are focused on general baseball were allowed two votes as well, which they could use both on the same league or split between the two leagues.

Chapters generally followed one of two methods when casting their ballot. Either representatives of the chapter were given the ballots for voting or a “group ballot” was posted, accounting for both of their votes.

Ballots are posted on the respective blogs and tabulated on a 5-3-1 point scale for first, second and third. In the interest of transparency, links are given below for the ballots. Chapter affiliation is in parenthesis. Those chapters that decided on the group method are noted with an asterisk.

American League

Camden Crazies (Baltimore)*

Boston Red Thoughts (Boston)*

Toeing The Rubber (Boston)*

The Tribe Daily (Cleveland)*

Motor City Bengals (Detroit)

Switch Hitting Pitchers (Detroit)

One Royal Way (Kansas City)

Seth Speaks (Minnesota)

Bronx Baseball Daily (New York)*

Contract Year (Oakland)

Jeff’s Mariners Fan Blog (Seattle)

Rise of the Rays (Tampa Bay)

Baseball Is My Boyfriend (Texas)*

The Blue Jay Hunter (Toronto)

500 Level Fan (Toronto)

Advanced Fantasy Baseball (Fantasy)*

Misc. Baseball (History)*

Victoria Seals Baseball Blog (Other)*

Blogging From The Bleachers (General)*

National League

Prose and Ivy (Chicago)*

Cincinnati Reds Blog (Cincinnati)

Astros County (Houston)

Feeling Dodger Blue (Los Angeles)

Bernie’s Crew (Milwaukee)*

Brewers Bar (Milwaukee)*

The Eddie Kranepool Society (New York)*

Dugger’s Corner (Philadelphia)

Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke? (Pittsburgh)*

i70 Baseball (St. Louis)

The Outfield Ivy (St. Louis)

Friar Forecast (San Diego)*

Advanced Fantasy Baseball (Fantasy)*

Misc. Baseball (History)*

Victoria Seals Baseball Blog (Other)*

Blogging From The Bleachers (General)*

Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf (Miscellaneous)*

Prior Winners

2009: Mike Scioscia, Los Angeles of Anaheim; Jim Tracy, Colorado

The official website of the BBA is located at www.baseballbloggersalliance.com. The BBA can be found on Twitter by the handle @baseballblogs and by the hashmark #bbba. Members of the BBA may be heard at Blog Talk Radio every Tuesday night with their call-in show, BBA Baseball Talk, which may also be downloaded as a podcast from iTunes. For more information, contact Daniel Shoptaw at founder@baseballbloggersalliance.com.

BBA AL Connie Mack Award Ballot

Baseball's award season is upon us and we finally have a vote that counts for something this year. We're proud members of the Baseball Blogger Alliance and they've been kind enough to give us ballots. The only thing the BBWAA ever gave us was the stink eye when we saw them on the subway that one time. Today we'll be unveiling our AL Connie Mack Ballot for manager of the year.

1. Terry Francona
Despite Boston missing the playoffs, I'm giving Tito the slight nod over Ron Washington because he somehow managed the Red Sox to an 89-73 record in baseball's toughest division without core players. The Sox lost their entire outfield, their MVP second baseman, Mike Lowell turned 127, Big Papi had his usual godawful start and Jonathan Papelbon melted down. Paps led the AL in blown saves with 8 and, if that wasn't enough, Daniel Bard was tied for second with 7. I don't know what Tito was doing in Boston this year and even if I found out it was voodoo, I'd still give him the credit for it.

2. Ron Washington
Washington's Rangers managed to unseat the Angels from atop the AL West. He got an MVP season out of Josh Hamilton, a big rebound year from Vlad Guerrero, a break out performance from CJ Wilson and barely had to worry about bullpen management as Neftali Feliz set the rookie saves record. All of the stars aligned perfectly for him. It also didn't hurt that Seattle was terrible, Oakland was just a .500 club and the Angels started Brandon Wood.

3. Ron Gardenhire
It infuriates me to see Gardy go do something like sac bunt in the first inning but he constantly has the Twins in the playoffs. This year he did so despite losing Justin Morneau half way through an MVP caliber season and Joe Nathan for the season. He even got 221 solid innings out of Carl Pavano without him turning back into a pumpkin. I suspect that might have been voodoo too though. Gardy won the Central by 6 games over the White Sox after it looked like it could be a close race.