GM of the Year 2011

[MillerTime]

Time to give out some hardware.  Nominations?

[OUDAN]

i vote for Myself lol! haha no really prolly Daniel i feel the jays made it the farthest with the least amount of talent, no offense Daniel

[Colby]

Candidates that come to mind are Daniel :TOR:, Rob :OAK:, Freddy :KC:, Paul :STL:, and Chad :CLE:.  The Indians and Cardinals made the playoffs in 2011 - something they were expected to do last year.  The Blue Jays were able to replace a lot of the talent they lost in 2010, run the team Moneyball-like, and win the American League.  The Royals blew it at the end of the season, but their success should not be discounted.  They weren't expected to put it together until 2012.

Props must be given to Daniel whose Blue Jays have done a tremendous job two years in a row.  My vote is for the lone Canadian team ran by our resident Venezuelan.

[Dan Wood]

I vote for Arizona...really did a good job out in the desert... made a lot of good trades, and picked up several nice FAs...Omar has my vote

[kungfuwig]

If I made the playoffs I would be happy to throw my vote for myself, haha, but with injuries and poor streaks towards the end we fell apart. I vote for Daniel this year. Good job bud.

[VolsRaysBucs]

After being the Jays personal doormat for two years straight, my vote has got to go to Daniel as well.  Very well done good sir.

[h4cheng]

Counting down from no.3

3) Daniel / :TOR: - Outstanding job with that roster and obviously took the team to the world series. The only reason Daniel finished 3rd is because of lack of upside of the TOR roster: I have doubts that TOR will be able to replicate or even improve on their performance

2) Rob / :OAK: - OAK actually has less cap space to work with than TOR and ended up with a better record in the regular season. There are two reasons for Rob not coming out with the award: 1) not doing enough to improve the team at the trading deadline and 2) The strong performance of another manager. There were a lot of positives this year including acquisition of Teixera/McCutchen/Rasmus and correctly dumping Uggla/Johnson. The farm system also looks very strong.

So who did better than Daniel and Rob this year?
My vote for the manager of the year goes to...

1) Ben / :MIL: - Ben doesn't get a lot of credit because MIL is always stacked with talent. However, MIL's cap (98M) is only 4M more than TOR's cap. This year many team (including myself) picked MIL to struggle yet MIL was one win away from the World Series. In the past off season, MIL was faced with a bunch of tough decisions on which RFAs should be retained. Ben was able to retain Berkman (who I thought would decline) and Utley while swapping Fielder for Hosmer and Beltran. Furthermore, he was able to get A.Cabrera and others for Gallardo (I think?). Once the season started, MIL acquired James Shields/Mauer/Helton on the cheap. The team took out the defending Champ in the postseason and was very close to winning it all. There are no significant departures for next year and the farm is stacked. For these reasons, I nominate Ben as the manager of the year.

[Paul S.]

My vote goes to Ben again this year.  His team consistently led the league in scoring during the regular season and lost a great matchup to the Dodgers in the playoffs. 

[Jake]

I would make a vote for Ben.  In my opinion, Ben edges Daniel slightly because he played in a much tougher divison and league.  Both are commendable for the award, however.

[Bigbenxl786]

My vote defiantly goes to Rob. Even though I did not do much to change my team he was always there to help with any questions i had as I sat and learned. As well as he did an awesome job taking a team with a very small cap and making them very competitive. Also he has built his team that barring a bad injury his team can only improve.