The Rays’ Kevin Cash was named the American League winner and the Giants’ Gabe Kapler the National League winner of the 2021 Manager of the Year Award by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in results revealed Tuesday night on MLB Network. Cash beat out finalists Dusty Baker (Astros) and Scott Servais (Mariners), while Kapler held off Craig Counsell (Brewers) and former Cardinals skipper Mike Shildt.
Projected to win just 75 games by Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system and given just a 5.7% chance of reaching the playoffs by FanGraphs’ forecast, Kapler’s Giants wound up instead with their highest win total (107) in franchise history and their best winning percentage (.660) since 1913.
Though it would be a different story in the NL Division Series, San Francisco ended the Dodgers’ dominant run of eight straight NL West titles. It was the Giants’ first division crown since 2012, and it was in large measure a testament to Kapler’s management of the oldest position-player group in MLB and a pitching staff that, as a product of injury and design, required a lot of mixing and matching.
After a brief and unfulfilling two-year tenure in Philadelphia, Kapler was not a popular pick to succeed the esteemed Bruce Bochy, who had guided the Giants to three World Series titles, in this role. But in winning this award, Kapler has done something even Bochy did not do. Prior to Kapler, the only person to win Manager of the Year with the Giants was Dusty Baker, in 1993, 1997 and 2000.
The Manager of the Year honor is typically reserved for skippers of clubs that outperform expectations, which is why, until this point, Hall of Famer Bobby Cox (2004-05) had been the only person to win it in consecutive years. But Cash now joins Cox in that rare category, having guided the Rays to their second straight AL East title despite the notable offseason departures of Blake Snell and Charlie Morton and the in-season loss of ace Tyler Glasnow.
With a predominantly young and unproven rotation, a revolving door in the bullpen and a midseason change in shortstops (Willy Adames was traded to the Brewers in May, and top prospect Wander Franco arrived about a month later), the Rays nabbed the AL’s top seed with the first 100-win season in franchise history. Cash’s roster utilized 61 different players and 158 different batting orders, but the constants through it all were his relaxed demeanor and communication skills.
Like Joe Maddon before him (2008 and 2011), Cash is a two-time winner of this award with the Rays because of his ability to maximize the capabilities of a cost-conscious club in a notoriously difficult division.