Guardians’ Stephen Vogt wins AL Manager of the Year

For Cleveland Guardians’ manager Stephen Vogt, it took just 397 days following his retirement as an MLB player to make it to the top of his profession.

According to vote results by the Baseball Writers' Association of America released on Wednesday, Vogt garnered 27 of 30 first-place votes – 2 second-place and 1 third-place votes, thereby recording 142 points in total to win the 2024 Manager of the Year Award in the American League. MLB.com described him as the fastest award winner to transition from player. Joe Girardi had been the one who had the title as of 2006 after playing for the 2003 season.

Joining the Tampa Bay Rays in 2012 to play as a catcher or a first baseman, he retired from baseball in Oakland on Oct. 6, 2022. Given his career average of 0.239, 82 home runs, and 313 RBIs, he was not considered an outstanding athlete. However, he was appointed as a bullpen coach in Seattle last January in recognition of his leadership potential and became Cleveland’s manager in November of the same year. Just a year after he took the helm, Cleveland turned 180 degrees. After all, it only remained in 3rd place in the American League Central with 76 wins and 86 losses last season, but conquered the district with 92 wins and 69 losses with little change to the athletes. Although the New York Yankees held it back before the World Series, it went beyond the Division Series to reach the AL Championship Series.

In his rookie season, Vogt sought advice from expert coaches on each specialty field as he had little experience with coaching. In particular, he assigned Carl Willis, the team’s current pitching coach, to manage the bullpen, leading the pitchers to live up to Vogt’s expectations with a satisfying ERA of 2.57 this season. Vogt gave credit to the players, saying that all of this would not have been possible without them. In the National League, Milwaukee's Pat Murphy, a 65-year-old seasoned manager, earned the crown of the Manager of the Year.


Heon-Jae Lee uni@donga.com