Author: Rowan Kavner

For anyone up in arms wondering how World Series champion Dave Roberts wasn’t even a finalist (again) for Manager of the Year in the National League and how Blue Jays skipper John Schneider didn’t run away with the award in the American League, a reminder is warranted. 

The awards are based solely on the regular season, and votes are cast before the playoffs. Postseason performance does not factor in. 

Again: Postseason performance does not factor in. 

This feels especially important to reiterate when discussing this particular award compared to others voted on by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, considering how subjective it is and how much the postseason can understandably shape fan perception of a manager’s performance. 

Unlike other awards, you can’t look at WAR or OPS or ERA to determine the credentials for the best manager in baseball. In addition, front offices increasingly have a role in decisions on the field, and we can’t possibly know how much one manager is involved over another or all the conversations taking place behind the scenes. 

What we can see, especially in October: Did the game speed up on the manager in the biggest moments? Did he let his starter ride where others might have turned to the bullpen? Did it work out? Did he pick the right relief matchup in the right spot? Did his pinch-hit decision work out? How did gut calls pay off? All of that can separate a good manager from a great one and a great season from a championship one. 

But, as one of the 30 BBWAA members who voted on the AL Manager of the Year Award this year, we only have the first 162 games to make a decision. So we look at wins and losses, and we look at which teams outplayed expectations, and we look at the managers who got the best out of their players and kept the ship afloat through hazardous seas. 

Schneider, who took the Blue Jays from worst to first in the always formidable AL East, had a strong argument to win the award even before guiding the Blue Jays to their first World Series since 1993. 

He would have been my vote a couple of weeks before season’s end, and he would still be a perfectly reasonable choice. 

But Cleveland’s historic finish to the year, during which Vogt kept the belief of a Guardians team that ultimately overcame a 15.5-game deficit — the largest ever to win a division — was enough to sway my vote for AL Manager of the Year. 

My final ballot: 

1. Stephen Vogt, Guardians
2. John Schneider, Blue Jays
3. Dan Wilson, Mariners

That’s how the BBWAA voting ultimately panned out, as well, with Vogt earning 17 of the BBWAA’s 30 first-place votes. Schneider received 10, Wilson got two and Boston’s Alex Cora got one. Cora finished fourth in the voting followed by Detroit’s A.J. Hinch in fifth and Houston’s Joe Espada in sixth. 

The Guardians were more than 15 games out of first place on July 8. By then, starter Luis Ortiz had been placed on administrative leave amid an MLB gambling investigation. Weeks later, Cleveland lost star closer Emmanuel Clase to the same investigation. Neither pitcher would throw another pitch for the Guardians in 2025, and both would later be indicted on charges tied to allegedly rigging pitches. 

At the deadline, no help arrived. 

In fact, Cleveland’s path forward was made even more challenging when the Guardians traded away former Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber to Toronto as he approached his return from Tommy John surgery. 

It would have been easy to pack it up. 

The Guardians had a bottom-five payroll and an offense that lacked what appeared to be the requisite star power to mount a stunning comeback. José Ramírez could only do so much to lift an offense that finished the year ranked last in the AL in on-base percentage, slugging and OPS. 

Ramírez and first baseman Kyle Manzardo were the only Guardians players who hit above league average on the season. Ramírez and outfielder Steven Kwan were the only Guardians players worth at least 2 WAR. 

Meanwhile, the pitching wasn’t as overpowering as it was the year prior. The bullpen was missing Clase, and the rotation entered September ranked 18th in ERA and 19th in strikeout rate. 

On the morning of Sept. 5, with only 23 games left to play, the Guardians were still 11 games back in the AL Central. No team had ever overcome even a nine-game deficit in September to win a division. 

To his credit, Vogt kept the belief. 

“We can’t control the 11 games,” Vogt told me after winning the award. “The only way you can overcome a deficit like that is to win each individual game. We preached it and tried to live it every day.”

Certainly, the Tigers’ collapse down the stretch played a significant role in loosening Detroit’s season-long stranglehold in the AL Central, but that shouldn’t minimize what the Guardians accomplished, against all odds. 

They went 48-26 from July 7 through the end of the season, compiling more wins than any team in MLB during that time. And they finished the year winning 19 of their last 23 games, including a 5-1 mark against the Tigers team they were chasing, to ultimately capture their second straight division title under Vogt. 

He became the fourth skipper to win Manager of the Year in consecutive seasons, joining the Rays’ Kevin Cash (2020-21), the Braves’ Bobby Cox (2004-05) and the Brewers’ Pat Murphy, who was also named his respective league’s winner for the award for the second straight season on Tuesday. 

“I leaned on everyone around me,” Vogt told me. “I leaned on the coaching staff. I leaned on the front office. I leaned on the players. We were all in that together.”

Schneider and Wilson both mounted strong arguments. The Blue Jays, with a top-five payroll, a star in first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., a resurgent year from designated hitter George Springer and a bevy of depth pieces who took a massive leap forward, had a 20-win improvement and held off the Yankees to win their first division title in 10 years. The Mariners, bolstered by some major deadline additions, made a five-win improvement and won their first division title since 2001. 

Either would be fine choices, but neither overcame the odds of a Guardians team that everyone had counted out. It is the resilience of the Guardians that Vogt, who became the first skipper ever to win Manager of the Year in his first two big-league seasons at the helm, will remember most from the 2025 season.

“And that we actually got it done,” Vogt said.

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.

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A month before Nick Kurtz put the exclamation mark on his Rookie of the Year campaign when he became the youngest player ever to homer four times in a game, Athletics slugger Brent Rooker already knew what he was witnessing was unlike anything he had seen from a 22-year-old. 

The Athletics returned home from a road trip to host an Astros team that employed two of Major League Baseball’s most overpowering late-inning relievers in Bryan Abreu and Josh Hader. On June 16, Rooker was standing on first base in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth inning when Kurtz pulverized a slider from Abreu, pulling it 111.7 mph off the bat and 447 feet out to right field at Sutter Health Park for a walk-off home run. 

Three days later, Kurtz walked off Hader in a similar manner, taking the Astros closer 416 feet out to dead center.

It was one of just two home runs that Hader allowed to a left-handed hitter all year, and it came off the bat of a player who was less than a year removed from his last college game. 

“I think a lot of our eyes were opened,” Rooker told me months later, “to just kind of how special he is.” 

It was around that time that Kurtz transformed from an intriguing prospect into the best hitter in Major League Baseball. From June 15 through the end of the season, Kurtz led MLB in both OPS (1.112) and wrC+ (200), hitting 100% better than league average and posting numbers that topped even what Yankees star Aaron Judge accomplished over that time. It was one of the best second halves ever, a remarkable feat for any player, let alone one who was drafted the season prior and had played in only 32 minor-league games. 

“There’s obviously a little bit of pressure added on top of that because, ‘He moved up fast, is he ready, is he not?’” Kurtz told me in September, a day before the A’s put up 17 runs on the Angels. “That’s kind of why you do it, you know? Yeah, it’s tough, but it’s what makes it fun and kind of the challenge of it all. All right, how good can I be with all that pressure?”

Historically good, as it turns out. 

Kurtz wasn’t called up until April 23, yet he still produced one of the greatest rookie seasons of all time, launching 36 home runs with a 1.002 OPS. The only other rookies to reach those numbers in the last 100 years were Judge in 2017 and Albert Pujols in 2001. 

The circumstances could’ve overwhelmed Kurtz. Instead, the quick ascension — and the doubters that came with it — served as extra motivation. 

“You think I’m not as good as I am? I’m going to try to prove you wrong,’” Kurtz said. “Then there’s also going and proving people right.”

‘He’s Years Advanced’

It’s easy now, considering Kurtz was crowned the unanimous Rookie of the Year on Monday, to forget that it took some time for his raw power to manifest as a big leaguer. 

For much of the year, Kurtz’s teammate, Jacob Wilson, was the odds-on favorite to win MLB’s top rookie honor. While Wilson racked up hits in bunches, Kurtz had a .558 OPS 23 games into his career. 

The 2024 No. 4 overall pick didn’t hit his first home run until his 17th game, and after he finally went deep, he then went hitless over his next six games. Kurtz struck out in 31 of his first 77 at-bats. 

And yet, by season’s end, he still led all rookies in home runs, runs, RBI, walks, slugging and OPS.

“The mental fortitude he has at 22, I was nowhere near that,” said teammate Shea Langeliers. “He’s years advanced.”

Langeliers, a 2019 first-round pick who was also an A’s top prospect when he debuted at 24 years old, could relate more than most to Kurtz’s situation. During Kurtz’s slow start, he encouraged the phenom first baseman to take a step back and think about the incredible situation he found himself in, living out his lifelong dream. 

The early growing pains were understandable for a player in Kurtz who was playing college baseball just a year ago. Suddenly, the pitches were moving more, and he was no longer seeing the same mistakes he was making at the lower levels with the same frequency. 

“It can be overwhelming,” Langeliers said. “It feels like you’ve got to be the best player on the field at all times.”

The biggest change Kurtz had to make was more mental than mechanical. 

Entering the big leagues, he always thought he should be able to get a hit off anybody in any at-bat. He would learn that’s not always possible. 

“Just being OK with failure,” Kurtz explained. “Being OK with, ‘I can’t hit a homer off this guy today, what else can I do to get on base? How can I provide value?’”

His A’s teammates helped him gain that perspective. 

“I’m talking to Shea, I’m talking to Rook, I’m talking to guys that are like, ‘This is what they’re doing to you, you got nothing to hit that at-bat, move on,’” Kurtz said. “… A lot of it is like, OK, what do I do now? What do I need to change? I got a hit off that last time. What should I look for next time?’”

Kurtz is prone to swing and miss, but he doesn’t chase out of the zone, and he’ll take his free passes. He always has. In just three seasons at Wake Forest, Kurtz set the team’s single-season and career records for walks. Even when Kurtz’s power wasn’t translating early on with the A’s, his teammates saw that same quality of at-bat and advanced approach and believed it was only a matter of time until everything clicked. They would relay those words of encouragement to the 22-year-old slugger. 

“‘Hey man, you’re obviously super talented,” Rooker would tell him. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, keep doing the right things, the production’s going to come.”

“‘You made it, just enjoy the moment, be in the moment,’” Langeliers recalled telling Kurtz. “And just something along the lines of, ‘Be yourself. You don’t have to be anything more. You’re here for a reason. You are that good. Just believe in that.’” 

Darren Bush, the team’s director of hitting, encouraged Kurtz to be a good hitter first and the home runs would follow. Over a 43-game stretch after the early slump, Kurtz blasted 22 homers. 

Mechanically, nothing significant had changed. 

“He was drafted last year, and he’s in the big leagues,” Bush said. “You’re not going to make a whole lot of changes. You have to learn how to adjust. You have to learn how to face big-league pitching and understand what they’re trying to do, and you have to learn how to continue to do what you do well and not allow them to alter you off of what you do well. That takes time.”

Yet after the slow start, Kurtz somehow seemed immune from the peaks and valleys most young players experience. 

While his average dipped down the stretch, his OPS for each individual month from May through the end of the year was above .850. He could hit any type of pitch, slugging over .500 against fastballs, breaking balls and offspeed pitches. 

By year’s end, he was one of just three players along with Judge and Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani to finish the season with an OPS over 1.000 in more than 400 at-bats. Seeing his name alongside those MVPs elicited a grin. 

“Obviously I know it’s there, I have Instagram,” Kurtz said. “I see that kind of stuff.” 

He tries not to let it impact him. 

“I really just like being where my feet are,” Kurtz said. “Today, let’s worry about today. Today sucked? OK, let’s worry about tomorrow. That’s how I kind of deal with failure, moving on. Baseball’s not life or death.” 

Homers and Standing Ovations

That mindset, even going back to Wake Forest, has always served Kurtz well. 

Kurtz had an OPS over 1.100 all three years in college, but through his first 19 games of his junior season, he was hitting .231 with only three home runs. 

He then mashed 14 home runs over his next 10 games. 

His ability to withstand the ups and downs of a season, Wake Forest head coach Tom Walter believes, is both the result of Kurtz’s exceptional decision-making at the plate and his personality. Even when Kurtz was getting pitched around late in his college career, he didn’t let that frustration bleed into his performance or force him out of the zone. 

“It’s not a ‘ride the emotional rollercoaster,’” Walter told me. “He takes a mature and professional approach to the game, and he understands that there are going to be stretches where you’re struggling, and there are going to be stretches where you’re really going good, and over time those are going to kind of even out.”

That’s how it played out in his first year with the A’s. 

Kurtz, who describes himself as a streaky power hitter, hit four home runs over a four-game stretch and seemed to be picking up steam in late May when he strained his hip flexor. He returned on June 9. A week later, he delivered the walk-offs against Abreu and Hader. 

Suddenly, the home runs started coming in bunches. 

His prodigious power was evident in his bat speed (sixth highest in MLB this year), his barrel rate (seventh in MLB), his 18 home runs that traveled more than 400 feet and the way he sprayed his homers across all fields. From July 8-21, he launched six in 10 games, setting the scene for the most memorable game of his captivating rookie year. 

On July 25 in Houston, Kurtz went 6-for-6 with four home runs, a feat accomplished only one other time in MLB history, when Shawn Green did it in 2002. Three of his four home runs went the other way into the Crawford Boxes in left field. It was such an extraordinary power display that it even earned an ovation and hat tips from Houston fans.

The rest of the year, Kurtz would continue to inspire awe with his feats of strength. 

In the middle of September, he hit such a breathtaking grand slam that his teammate Lawrence Butler, who was standing on second base, just turned around and stared at the ball with his mouth agape. The mammoth shot to center, a 493-foot blast that cleared the batter’s eye at Sutter Health Park, was the longest home run by any player since Ohtani hit one the same projected distance two years prior. 

“The way he handled the failure, this kid gets it,” Langeliers told me. “A lot of guys — I would say most guys — struggle with that when they first get here just because whatever your hole is, they’re going to find it, and they’re going to expose you.”

Only time will tell how Kurtz might need to adjust again. His breakout year came despite struggles against lefties and the seventh-highest strikeout rate among all players with at least 400 plate appearances. In addition, poor defensive grades at first base limited his overall value. Those deficiencies might also demonstrate the ceiling still untapped in the preternatural 22-year-old, who is part of a fascinating nucleus of offensive standouts in Sacramento. 

The A’s only won 76 games this year, but their offense ranked eighth in OPS. And with the emergence of Kurtz and Wilson, who became the first set of teammates to finish first and second in AL Rookie of the Year voting since 1984 (Mariners duo Alvin Davis and Mark Langston), they can envision a more prosperous future — one that their 35-29 record in the second half might indicate is not far away. 

“It’s visible that we’re building toward something special,” Langeliers said. “We have that core group here, guys that are performing and only getting better.” 

Added Kurtz: “This team could be as good as we want to.”

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.

 

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LOS ANGELES – Twelve months ago, on the same stage he found himself back atop Monday afternoon at Dodger Stadium, Clayton Kershaw was beckoned to the dais by his teammates and coaches. 

His ailing body had not allowed him to contribute much to the team’s 2024 title run, but the Dodgers knew the future Hall of Famer deserved the moment, and the tears in his eyes displayed what it meant to him. So moved by the gesture, and the euphoria of winning his first full-season championship, Kershaw exclaimed to a fanbase that had lived and died with all of his spectacular successes and gut-wrenching failures over 17 seasons with the team that he was a “Dodger for life.”  

One year later, Kershaw could not have written a better storybook ending to a legendary 18-year career. 

Forty-six days after Kershaw announced his impending retirement, 36 days after the end of a regular season in which the Dodgers needed their all-time strikeout leader more than they could have possibly imagined and seven days after the 37-year-old lefty navigated his club out of a bases-loaded jam by retiring the only batter he faced in the World Series, Kershaw was the last player with a microphone in his hand at the Dodgers’ second straight championship celebration Monday in Los Angeles. 

“Last year, I said I was a Dodger for life,” Kershaw told the crowd. “Today, that’s true. And today, I get to say that I’m a champion for life. And that’s never going away.” 

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has long discussed his intention of making this the golden era of Dodgers baseball. 

With their second straight World Series title and third in the last six years cementing a dynasty, that era is here. 

“I think, definitionally, it’s a dynasty,” Friedman said. “But that to me, in a lot of ways, kind of caps it, if you say, ‘OK, this is what it is.’ For me, it’s still evolving and growing, and we want to add to it, and we want to continue it and do everything we can to put it at a level where people after us have a hard time reaching.” 

In 2020, the Dodgers ended a 32-year championship drought. In 2024, another World Series win silenced the naysayers who tried to downplay the significance of their short-season title. Afterward, 42,468 fans packed Dodger Stadium to celebrate in a way they couldn’t after the COVID-shortened season. 

The team’s recent history of success did not temper the city’s revelry this year, as evidenced by the 52,703 cheering fans in attendance Monday at Dodger Stadium, where the team’s parade route ended after double-decker buses navigated the players and coaches through the streets of downtown L.A.

“For it to match the experience we had last year was incredible,” Friedman said, “and it really is a fuel that will push us to do everything we can to do it again and three-peat.”

That was the prevailing theme of Monday’s celebration. 

“What’s better than two?” manager Dave Roberts exclaimed to the crowd, in a nod to his friend Pat Riley. “Three! Three-peat! Three-peat! Let’s go!” 

One by one, the Dodgers’ players of prominence got their turn with the microphone. No one got a louder pop than World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who earned the admiration of a city by pitching on back-to-back days to earn wins in Game 6 and 7. After shouldering the weight of his team’s season, his MVP trophy was too heavy to lift. On Monday, though, he said his arm survived. 

On stage, Will Smith and Miguel Rojas, two of the other heroes of Game 7 in Toronto, shared a hug. Smith is a reminder of a record Dodgers payroll that energized the L.A. fanbase and agitated 29 others. Rojas, a 36-year-old part-time player near the end of his career, is an example of the depth required beyond the stars to finish off a World Series title. 

“It’s about everybody in this organization doing what they need to do when their name is called,” said Rojas, who singled out a litany of players and plays that allowed the biggest moment of his career to eventually find him. 

Others were more boisterous about the team’s latest success. 

“My teammates have been pretty humble,” said Kiké Hernández. “But I think it’s time to talk that s—. Everybody’s been asking questions about a dynasty. How about three in six years? How about a back-to-back? Yes, we’re a mother-effin’ dynasty, baby.” 

In the end, that can’t be questioned, even though it took more than most anticipated to get to this point. The Dodgers were not the juggernaut many envisioned. As injuries accumulated, their 93 wins were their fewest since 2018. Their offense was volatile. Their bullpen was abominable. Roberts navigated the team through its shortcomings, extracting everything he could from his starting pitchers to get the job done. 

The Blue Jays outscored the Dodgers in the World Series and scored 33 more runs than them over the course of the postseason, despite playing in just one more game. They were two outs away from ending the Dodgers’ repeat bid. 

But the Dodgers outlasted them. 

And in the immediate aftermath of becoming the first back-to-back winners in 25 years, they’re already looking ahead. 

Mookie Betts, who now has four World Series rings, said he’s ready to fill his hand up. Shohei Ohtani, who has won titles in each of his first two years with the Dodgers, told the crowd in English that he’s “ready to get another.” 

Added Freddie Freeman: “Job in 2024, done. Job in 2025, done. Job in 2026, starts now.” 

Freeman is still waiting for the team’s latest success to sink in. Last year, the 2024 World Series MVP said it took about a month for that to happen. In the meantime, all he can focus on is preparing for 2026, when the Dodgers will attempt to become the first team to three-peat since the Yankees from 1998-2000. 

“That’s the thing, we’re not trying to do something that another team did,” Freeman said. “We’re just trying to win every single year. That’s why we do it. I’m gonna take probably three days off before working out again and getting ready for 2026. That’s what we do. We want to win. That’s why we play this game.”

Only one player on the championship stage won’t have to think about that grind again. 

A World Series title in 2020 brought Kershaw relief. Another in 2024 brought him to tears. The latest sent the Dodgers’ all-time strikeout leader out on top, with his family next to him on the championship stage. 

“It’s beyond words,” Kershaw said. “Today’s so special. I mean, you can’t really script it any better.” 

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.

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