The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Cleveland reporter Terry Pluto cast the first-place vote for Ron Gardenhire that kept the Rays’ Joe Maddon from being the unanimous Manager of the Year selection in the American League. Gardy finished second for the fourth time.

In an interview on tampabay.com, Pluto explained: “The voting is done in the final week of the season, so I did not have the playoffs to consider,” Pluto said. “If they did the voting after, certainly Joe would have got it. I had great respect for both men, and gave the edge to Gardenhire for keeping his team in contention after losing Santana, etc. I had no idea how anyone else was voting. I certainly didn’t set out to stiff Joe by being the lone voice not to have him No. 1.”

Pluto also said, “I’m glad Joe won. Clearly after what he did in the playoffs, he deserves it. It’s just how it is.”

To me, Maddon was an easy choice. He took a franchise that had an alpha/omega tradition of horrendous baseball and got them into the World Serieswithin one game of the World Series. (Blogger’s note: Brain cramp repaired!) He did it with many of the same players who had been a part of the sucking noise we always heard from central Florida baseball — and he did it while doing a boatload of in-game managing. The things that stand out to me was how he worked through key injuries (Longoria and Crawford), B.J. Upton’s lack of hustle and a bullpen situation in which he often had to match the right reliever to the end-game situation.

One more note: Pluto is a veteran journalist and a good one. And if you’re wondering where you’ve heard his name before, he is the author of Loose Balls,  an interview-rich history of the American Basketball Association, the offshoot league that spent a decade goosing the NBA a generation ago.

I think the Maddon ‘09 challenge is going to be even greater next year because he’s going to have to convince a pretty immature team that what it accomplished in 2008 doesn’t carry over, especially if key players spend a contented winter reveling in their accomplishments.

Give me odds and I’ll bet the Rays don’t win 80 next year.

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The American League’s Cy Young Award winner is going to be announced today. Cliff Lee of Cleveland is the conventional-wisdom choice. Roy Halliday of Toronto will get some love (justified) and so will K-Rod (not as justified). Got thoughts on that one?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 10:39 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.