Hurdle Wins Second Consecutive Connie Mack Award

Baltimore Orioles manager Buck Showalter and Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle were named the 2014 Connie Mack Award winners today by the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. The Connie Mack Award recognizes those considered the top manager for the season.

This is the second straight year for Hurdle to take home the hardware from the BBA after breaking the Pirates’ long playoff drought last season. Hurdle again led Pittsburgh into the promised land of October, securing a wild-card berth after a strong September surge left them just short of the divisional title.

Hurdle received seven first place votes among the 16 ballots cast and was left off entirely of only one voter’s entry. Hurdle received 51 points, eleven more than his closest competition, Bruce Bochy of the San Francisco Giants.

Showalter led the Orioles to their first American League East divisional title since 1997, winning the division by 12 games over the New York Yankees. Baltimore won 96 games this season, eleven more than they were able to win in 2013.

Showalter garnered 11 first place votes from the 15 ballots cast. He was named on every ballot and outpaced his closest rival, Kansas City’s Ned Yost, by 37 points.

The complete voting results are as follows (first place votes in parenthesis):

American League

Buck Showalter, Baltimore (11) 65
Ned Yost, Kansas City (3) 28
Mike Scioscia, Los Angeles (1) 22.5
Lloyd McClendon, Seattle 13
Bob Melvin, Oakland 3
Tito Francona, Cleveland 2
Brad Ausmus, Detroit 1.5

National League

Clint Hurdle, Pittsburgh (7) 51
Bruce Bochy, San Francisco (4) 40
Matt Williams, Washington (2) 20
Don Mattingly, Los Angeles (1) 17
Mike Matheny, St. Louis (2) 16

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of this writing, the organization consists of 215 blogs spanning most of the 30 major league squads as well as general baseball writing.

The BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into “chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted. The blog chapters that are focused on general baseball were allowed two votes as well, which they could use both on the same league or split between the two leagues.

Chapters generally followed one of two methods when casting their ballot. Either representatives of the chapter were given the ballots for voting or a “group ballot” was posted, accounting for both of their votes.

Notably, though the Alliance’s awards come out well before their official counterparts, the BBA selections have matched those of the Baseball Writers of America in all but two instances in the past two years. This, of course, does not include the Goose Gossage Award that is exclusive to the BBA.

Ballots are posted on the respective blogs and for this award, were tabulated on a 5-3-1 point scale for first through third place. In the interest of transparency, links to the individual ballots are listed below.

Prior Winners:

2013: John Farrell, Boston; Clint Hurdle, Pittsburgh

2012: Bob Melvin, Oakland; Davey Johnson, Washington

2011: Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay; Kirk Gibson, Arizona Diamondbacks

2010: Ron Washington, Texas; Bud Black, San Diego

2009: Mike Scioscia, Los Angeles of Anaheim; Jim Tracy, Colorado

Voters:

American League
Boston Red Thoughts
The Tribe Daily
The Flagrant Fan
Misc. Baseball
North Dakota Twins Fan
TribeCards
Subway Squawkers
Victoria HarbourCats Baseball Blog
Seattle Mariners Musings
The Blue Jay Hunter
500 Level Fan