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One year ago, Orioles manager Buck Showalter narrowly lost out on winning the American League Manager of the Year Award. The O's were as much of a surprise team as the Athletics, both of whom stormed out of nowhere to make the playoffs. For 2013, with the Orioles performing decently but not outlandishly above expectations, Showalter received only a single third place vote.
The winner was Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona, who returned from the broadcast booth to lead that team into the Wild Card game. This year's runner up was Red Sox manager John Farrell, who did a great job of having two injured closers so that he could figure out Koji Uehara was his best relief pitcher on the third try. The man who defeated Showalter last year, Oakland Athletics manager Bob Melvin, came in third place after leading his team to back-to-back AL West titles.
BBWAA awards have 30 ballots per league, with two votes per league city. The lone vote for Showalter came from Seattle-based Asuka Iinuma Brown, who writes for the Jiji Press. She voted for Melvin as the winner, with Rays manager Joe Maddon receiving the second place vote.
The Baltimore-based writers with ballots for this award were Pat Stoetzer of the Carroll County Times and Jim Henneman, the former Baltimore Sun reporter. Both of them had ballots with Farrell in first, Francona in second, and Melvin in third.
The awards have been unveiled each night at 6pm. Wednesday will be the Cy Young Award, where the Orioles are not likely to have any votes at all unless some crazy person thinks that Chris Tillman's 16 wins (fourth in the AL) mean that he warrants consideration for the Cy Young.