Major League Baseball will announce the winner of the 2015 American League Manager of the Year live on MLB Network at 6 p.m. ET Tuesday evening. In light of that, we're going to make the case for each of the three candidates. Here's the case for Paul Molitor. He is up against Jeff Bannister of the Rangers and A.J. Hinch of the Astros.
A Hall of Fame player who spent the final three seasons of his illustrious career with the Twins -- leading the AL in hits at age 39 in 1996 -- Paul Molitor was long a favorite son in Minnesota. He was born and raised in St. Paul and attended the University of Minnesota. So it was only natural he'd get his first crack at managing in the majors with the Twins.
Molitor entered the 2015 season as a first-year manager with a team that had lost at least 90 games in the previous four seasons. The Twins were coming off a 70-92 season and didn't appear to be ready to make a huge leap forward in 2015. The overwhelming majority of pundits predicted the Twins to finish last in the very competitive AL Central.
Instead, the Twins hung around in contention until the last week of the season, finishing 83-79, their best record since 2010.
This was Molitor's first experience as a manager at any level and he guided his team to a winning record despite:
- Losing Ervin Santana for the first half of the season due to a suspension and several other pitchers dealing with injuries.
- Starting 1-6 and being outscored 45-16 in those first seven games.
- Giving 226 starts to rookies Eddie Rosario, Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton in addition to all those non-rookie youngsters like Aaron Hicks, Danny Santana, Kennys Vargas, Oswaldo Arcia and more.
- The offense ranking 14th in the AL in average, 15th in on-base percentage and 12th in slugging while the pitching staff ranked 10th in ERA.
- Kurt Suzuki and Joe Mauer -- among a few others -- having down years with the bat.
Really, if you look at the thin veteran talent, the number of youngsters needed and the number of injury/suspension issues on the pitching staff, it's remarkable that the Twins didn't lose 90 games again.
And yet, they almost made the playoffs.
We can't be sure how much to attribute to Molitor, but he has to get a lot of credit here. The only stats we have at our disposal are the Twins improving by 11 games and Molitor winning 26 of his 42 manager challenges.
Those are very impressive numbers.
In all, Molitor is a very strong choice for AL Manager of the Year.
