Vogt wins AL Manager of Year in record speed

CLEVELAND -- A winning record in his first managerial season wasn’t enough. An American League Central title wasn’t enough. A run to the AL Championship Series wasn’t enough. Stephen Vogt also had to make history.

Vogt was named the Baseball Writers' Association of America's 2024 AL Manager of the Year on Tuesday night, as announced on MLB Network. This is the third time in the past decade that a Cleveland skipper has taken home the honor. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Vogt is the fifth-youngest manager to win the award, trailing Rocco Baldelli, Buck Showalter, Tony La Russa and Eric Wedge. Vogt received 27 of the 30 first-place votes.

“I’m very proud,” Vogt said. “I’m always going to give the credit to the people that have to go out and do it, and that’s the players.”

But what Vogt did has never been done before.

• Manager of the Year Award history

Joe Girardi had been the fastest person to go from player to Manager of the Year winner. In 2006, he won the award with the Marlins after having played in the 2003 season with the Cardinals. Vogt finished his playing career on Oct. 5, 2022, with the A's. Just 397 days later, having no past managerial experience, Vogt was hired as Cleveland’s manager. By the end of 2024, he set the record as the fastest person to go from player to Manager of the Year in the award’s history.

The odds were certainly stacked against Vogt.

The Guardians went 76-86 in 2023. Over the offseason, they added backup catcher Austin Hedges and starter/reliever Ben Lively to the 40-man roster. Other than that, the front office was relatively quiet. Neither move seemed to be earth-shattering at the time, and there were questions as to how this offense would produce more runs. Oh, and by the way, the skipper had no idea what he was doing … or so we thought.

Vogt will be the first to tell you that he leaned heavily on the coaching staff around him, especially pitching coach Carl Willis, whom Vogt says has forgotten more things than Vogt knows about the game. But it was clear from the beginning that Vogt had a knack for getting everyone to buy in to the same message.

It was little things during Spring Training that created a noticeable difference from 2023. During the team’s daily meetings, different players were appointed DJ for the day and had control of the aux cord during outdoor practices. It seems simple, but it created a jovial buzz in the room that got everyone excited to show up to see who was in charge that morning. After leaving Arizona, the team continued to flourish.

“The beauty of this role in this job is that it's not about you, it's about your players and it's about their successes,” Vogt said. “There's really nothing I can do other than put people into positions to hopefully succeed, and to see our guys go out and have success, those were the high moments.”

Manager of the Year is the hardest vote to justify. There isn’t concrete evidence or statistics to prove one manager made more of an impact on his team than the other. Yet, Vogt may have come close by the way he managed his bullpen this season.

This is one of the biggest and scariest tasks to tackle for a skipper, especially an inexperienced one. Serving as a bullpen coach for Seattle in 2023 helped Vogt have a better feel for how to strategically use his best arms as often as possible without creating burnout throughout the regular season. And if he hadn’t figured that out, the Guardians would have been in hot water, considering their rotation was uncharacteristically unstable. Instead, the bullpen combined for a 2.57 ERA -- the fourth best among all 'pens since 1995.

Vogt leaned heavily on his bullpen. He was aggressive in turning to his bench and rarely let a player go more than a few days without getting into a game. He navigated around losing his ace, Shane Bieber, in the first week of the regular season. Vogt pieced together a rotation after having to send Triston McKenzie and Logan Allen -- two pitchers who were supposed to play big roles in 2024 -- to Triple-A Columbus. He helped former hitting coach Chris Valaika change the mindset of this offense’s approach to add more impact to the ball, which resulted in 46 more runs. And he brought home a division title in his first managerial season.

This was all so much more than anyone could’ve projected Vogt to endure and accomplish in his first year. Now, he’s ready to prove that Year Two will only get better.

“Hopefully we win the last game of the year next year,” Vogt said. “That’s the goal.”