Buck Showalter has boldly gone where no New York Mets skipper has gone before: he is the 2022 NL Manager of the Year, the first Amazins manager to ever win the award.
"That's humbling. Great recognition of an organization. What a great moment for our organization top to bottom," Showalter said on MLB Network shortly after the announcement. "This means a lot to everybody, thank you."
Showalter earned eight first-place, 10 second-place, and seven third-place votes for 77 points, beating out Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts and Atlanta's Brian Snitker, who finished second and third, respectively. St. Louis' Oliver Marmol was fourth, interim Phillies skipper Rob Thomson was fifth, and Padres manager Bob Melvin placed sixth to complete the ballot.
For Buck, who also got to announce the AL Manager of the Year Award winner earlier Tuesday, this is his fourth Manager of the Year Award with a fourth different team, having previously won with the 1994 Yankees, 2004 Rangers, and 2014 Orioles.
He is the third manager to win four Manager of the Year Awards, tying Tony LaRussa and Bobby Cox for the record, but is the only one to do it with four different franchises – Cox did it with the Blue Jays and Braves, LaRussa with the A's, Cardinals, and White Sox.
"Every situation is different, but coming into a new place doesn't necessarily always mean everything needs to be changed. This club was a different situation in trying to bring a group of people together quickly, and we didn't want our wounds to be self-inflicted. Very proud of what we accomplished as a team," Showalter said of his career arc.
Even more remarkable is that Showalter won this year after leading the Mets, who were 77-85 in 2021, to to 101 wins - becoming the fifth skipper with 100-plus wins with multiple teams and fourth to lead four teams to the postseason - and earned his fourth award nearly three decades after winning his first.
"In this game, sometimes, the more things chance, the more things stay the same," he said. "We now have a lot of different ways to verify the guts you have, a lot more stuff analytically to verify what your eyes and experience may tell you. There's a lot of different ways to skin a cat, and you confuse change with a lack of respect for tradition sometimes, but you adapt or die."
Buck's adaptation puts the Mets finally on the board for Manager of the Year, an award first voted on by the BBWAA in 1983. An Amazins skipper had finished as the runner-up three previous times, with Davey Johnson finishing second in 1984 and 1986, and Willie Randolph finishing behind Joe Girardi in 2006.
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