Guardians' Vogt wins 2nd consecutive AL Manager of the Year

Stephen Vogt has defended his crown as the American League's top manager.

The Cleveland Guardians manager was named AL Manager of the Year by the Baseball Writers' Association of America for a second consecutive season. The latest win makes Vogt the first skipper to ever win the award during each of his first two years as manager.

Vogt garnered 17 of 30 first-place votes to hold off Toronto's John Schneider and Seattle's Dan Wilson in a relatively close vote. Schneider earned 91 total points to finish second, while Wilson gathered 50 total points to finish a distant third. Boston Red Sox skipper Alex Cora received a single first-place tally.

The 41-year-old Vogt led Cleveland to an 88-74 record and a second consecutive AL Central title in shocking fashion. The Guardians sat six games below .500 and 15.5 games back of the Detroit Tigers on July 8 and were 10.5 games behind Detroit on Sept. 1. But they fought back, going 20-7 in September - a run that included 10 straight wins late in the month - to overtake Detroit and clinch the division.

Cleveland's 15.5-game deficit was the largest ever erased midseason by a team to win either its division or league (before 1968), surpassing the 1914 NL champion Boston Braves' 15-game turnaround.

Vogt is the fourth skipper to win Manager of the Year in consecutive seasons, joining Atlanta Braves Hall of Famer Bobby Cox, who won in 2004 and '05, Tampa Bay's Kevin Cash, who captured the honor in 2020 and '21, and two-time reigning NL winner Pat Murphy. Vogt's victory, along with that of Murphy's in the NL, marks the first time in the award's history that two managers received back-to-back honors in the same seasons.

Vogt joins three-time winner Terry Francona as the only managers to earn the award multiple times with Cleveland.