Why Kevin Cash Should Have Won Manager of the Year in 2019

Rocco Baldelli of the Minnesota Twins won Manager of the year for the American League in 2019 over Aaron Boone of the Yankees and Kevin Cash of the Tampa Bay Rays. The first reason why is that the Rays had the lowest payroll in the MLB at the start of the season with 49 million dollars. The Twins had twice that with 100 million. Cash led the rays to just as much success as the twins but did it with half as much money. Rocco Baldelli also coached under Kevin Cash for four years and probably learned everything he knew from Cash The second reason is that two months into the season, the Rays lost three out of four of their starting pitching for the year with Blake snell, Tyler Glasnow, and Yonny Chirinos were out for multiple months. Normally this would be a devastating blow to a team and derail their season. Cash didn’t let this stop them as he still found ways to get innings done.

Another thing is that the Rays were a sinking ship in 2015 when Cash took over as their manager. He took the rays from a 68 win season two a 90 win season In two years. The next year in 2019, he upped it to 96 wins. Finally, if all that wasn’t enough, the Rays and Twins both made the playoffs in 2019. The results went two different ways. The twins got absolutely blown out by the yankees in each of the three games and got swept. How can you give the manager of the year to a coach who’s team didn’t even have a fighting shot in the playoffs. The Rays won the wild card game to earn a spot at playing the Astros. The series was far more competitive as the rays forced a game five but lost. The only thing wrong with this is that the Astros were just punished for cheating. The Rays went up against a team who literally knew what was happening the next play by banging on trash cans and using technology to rig games, and the Rays still made them sweat and took them deep into game five. If you don’t believe this theory, all three of the Astros wins in that series came at home, when they played in Tampa, the Rays blew them out both times. So what would’ve happened if they played fair? The Rays could have taken down the number one seed and potentially gone a lot deeper in the playoffs. And that is why Kevin Cash should have won Manager of the Year.