Cleveland Indians: 3 reasons why Sandy Alomar deserves Manager of the Year

After replacing Terry Francona on Aug 1, Sandy Alomar has done what looked to be impossible and guided the Cleveland Indians the MLB playoffs.

Sandy Alomar was giving a daunting task at the height of the summer; take over for an ailing Terry Francona and lead this team to the playoffs. In any normal year under the Chris Antonetti regime, that’s an easy task. Depth of pitching, stellar minor league, deep bench. It’s rare that the team doesn’t win 90 games these days. Yet, this year it just felt different.

With Francona out, Alomar stepped up in a big way. Not only did he manage a massive crisis, but he also squeezed blood from a stone when it came to the offense. All that, while sitting on the legacy of being one of the three most popular players of the last 50 years for the club (Jim Thome, Omar Vizquel being the other two).

Alomar came in and did a wonderful job. That can’t be denied. Had it not been for a freak eight-game losing streak, the Indians would’ve won the AL Central with ease but baseball is governed by cruel gods.

These are three reasons why Sandy Alomar should win AL Manager of the Year.

He handled the fallout of the One Night in Chicago fiasco

Mike Clevinger and Zach Plesac breaking team and league rules was the biggest story in sports for a while, let alone Cleveland baseball. This was a sports-wide story that became more enflamed after Plesac released that Instagram video. The two were rightfully sent away to allow the team to regroup and decompress before Mike Clevinger was dealt away. This was such a debacle that it seemed like a reason the Indians could fall apart. Alomar kept the team focused and locked in, getting them past the incident and uniting them as a squad.

He filled in for his boss and did well, all while dealing with a pandemic

Every manager had to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic this year, but how many had to fill in on the fly? Dusty Baker is the only one that comes to mind, but it doesn’t feel like he’ll get the award mostly due to the negativity associated with that once-proud franchise. Alomar replaced Francona on Aug 1 and became the squad manager for nearly the entire season. His work with the squad has been a quiet story but it’s nonetheless just as impressive.

Anyone who got this offense to the playoffs should qualify as the front runner

Sure, the Indians will have soon-to-be-named Cy Young winner Shane Bieber and he and Jose Ramirez should finish in the top-three in the AL MVP voting if one of them doesn’t win it. All that said, this offense, and excuse my language, really stunk. The Indians were tied for third-worst in the AL for runs scored. No team in the AL Playoffs has scored as few runs as the Indians. Yet, Alomar kept shuffling the lineups, kept rotating guys in and out, and still managed to get a passable offense out of this group.