Manager of the Year

Tom Kelly was the American League’s Manager of the Year in 1991. It was his first (and only) MOY award; even though he probably turned in his best managing performance in 1988. That season Kelly’s team finished a distant second to the Oakland A’s, led by MOY Tony LaRussa, who probably could have slept through the summer and still gotten 100 wins from one of the all-time most talented teams. That season, Kelly dealt with high expectations from a championship the year before, an unpopular early-season trade in which the front office exchanged a fan-favorite right fielder with power for a supposedly high on-base second baseman who acted as though he would rather have a root canal than play with the Twins, and a fist fight between two of his players and still managed to improve his team’s won-loss record from the year before. Still, Kelly only managed a fifth place finish. TK had to wait four more years for his recognition, and he did it by using the formula the ...