11/10/2026 07:19:00
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11/10 19:17 CST Milwaukee's Pat Murphy first to win 3 straight Manager of Year
awards. Will Venable takes AL honor
Milwaukee's Pat Murphy first to win 3 straight Manager of Year awards. Will
Venable takes AL honor
By STEPHEN HAWKINS
AP Baseball Writer
Pat Murphy from first-time World Series champion Milwaukee is the NL Manager of
the Year, making him the first skipper from either league to win the award
three years in a row.
Milwaukee has won the NL Central in all three seasons with Murphy as its
manager after he spent eight seasons on Craig Counsell's staff. The Brewers led
the majors this year with a franchise-record 103 wins during the regular
season, then in the playoffs swept the two-time defending World Series champion
Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series and beat Tampa
Bay in a five-game World Series.
Murphy, who turns 68 on Nov. 28, was in a hospital bed recovering from hip
replacement surgery when he did interviews on MLB Network before and after the
announcement.
Will Venable is the American League Manager of the Year after the Chicago White
Sox became the first team in MLB history to reach the playoffs after
consecutive 100-loss seasons. Only the third of those came under Venable after
he took over in 2025. Chicago went 84-78 this year.
Balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America was conducted before
the postseason and announced Tuesday night.
The other NL finalists were Philadelphia's Don Mattingly and Atlanta's Walt
Weiss.
The Brewers play in Major League Baseball's smallest market and have a payroll
in the bottom half of the majors, but have had the best record in the big
leagues each of the past two seasons.
After sweeping the NLCS for their first World Series berth since their only
other one in 1982, Murphy celebrated by saying the Dodgers had Hall of Famers
but his team had gamers.
Only three other managers have won the award three times in the same
organization. Bobby Cox, one of three four-time winners along with Buck
Showalter and Tony La Russa, earned three with the Atlanta Braves (1991, 2004
and 2005). Cox is also the only other back-to-back NL winner.
Terry Francona was a three-time winner with Cleveland (2013, 2016 and 2022),
while Dusty Baker won three times with the San Francisco Giants (1993, 1997 and
2000).
Murphy got 20 of 30 first-place votes and finished with 124 points. Weiss came
in second with seven first-place votes and 86 points.
Venable received 15 of 30 first-place votes and 111 points in BBWAA balloting.
The other AL finalists were two-time winner Kevin Cash of the AL champion Tampa
Bay Rays, and Chad Tracy, who took over the Boston Red Sox in April and led
them to the playoffs.
Cash was runner-up with 12 first-place votes and 98 points. Tracy got three
first-place votes and 47 points.
Venable, a former big league outfielder, got his first managerial job when the
White Sox were coming off 121 losses in 2024, a record for the most since 1900,
after 101 losses the previous season. They went 60-102 in Venable's debut and
followed that this season by making the playoffs for the first time since 2021.
After sweeping Houston in two games on the road in the AL Wild Card Series,
they had a 2-0 series lead before losing a five-game AL Division Series to
Cleveland.
Before he was hired by the White Sox, Venable was on manager Bruce Bochy's
staff in Texas and was part of the Rangers' only World Series title in 2023.
Venable is first White Sox manager to win the award since Ozzie Guillen in 2005.
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