MLB Prediction: Manager of the Year Awards Should Go to Brandon Hyde (Baltimore Orioles) and Brian Snitker (Atlanta Braves)

It’s tougher to measure a great manager than, say, a great player, because so many factors go into getting the best out of a team over the course of a long season. But one of the most straightforward ways to quantify a manager’s success is to compare his team’s performance to what was expected going into the season (in this case, using a mix of computer forecasts and Vegas over/unders).

By that standard, Baltimore’s Brandon Hyde is our easy pick for top AL manager, with his Orioles beating expectations by a whopping 24.1 wins — more than double the figures for either of his fellow finalists (Kevin Cash of the Rays and Bruce Bochy of the Rangers). Adding a new star of Gunnar Henderson’s caliber helped, but Hyde helped mold the O’s from a team with a lot of young, unproven talent into a legitimate World Series contender.

The NL case is somewhat less straightforward. The manager whose team exceeded expectations the most, Cincinnati’s David Bell (+14.5 wins), wasn’t named a finalist — so Atlanta’s Brian Snitker is the best of the remaining choices, ahead of Miami’s Skip Schumacher and Craig Counsell of Milwaukee. That trio all guided playoff teams, and all three dealt with an above-average volume of injuries by cumulative team IL days. (Counsell faced very slightly more of those than Snitker did.) While we can’t call Atlanta a rags-to-riches story — the team was a preseason division favorite and the 2021 World Series winner — Snitker did help the Braves produce the most dominant regular season of any team in MLB.