Who Will Be the American League Manager of the Year in 2007?

Today I continue to make my 2007 Preseason predictions. We've gone over many awards already like the Rolaids Relief Award, the Silver Slugger Award and the Comeback Player of the Year. The players aren't the only ones that make a winning team though. Let's take a break from the players and take a look at the Managers.

Every year a Manager of the Year Award is given out to the best Manager in each league. There are three factors that I think are important in winning the Manager of the Year.

1. Winning Team - There are some exceptions of course but usually the Manager of the Year is a Manager that led a winning team, after all if a team is 62 - 100, that isn't a very impressive coaching job.

2. Improved Team - Often the Manager of the Year goes to a Manager that lead a team that came out of nowhere. The more games your team improves by the more credit your manager is going to get.

3. Young Team - Voters are usually impressed when a Manager can get very younger players to play to well sooner than expected, like Joe Girardi with the Florida Marlins last year.

With that in mind here are my picks for American League Manager of the Year:

5. Joe Torre, New York Yankees
Joe Torre doesn't have an improved team or a young team but he definitely has a winning team. There are only going to be so many Managers that lead a greatly improved team, after those the Managers with the best teams usually fall in line after that and Torre's Yankees will certainly be one of the favorites again.

4. Buddy Bell, Kansas City Royals
I'm not about to make a prediction as bold as the Kansas City Royals are going to win the World Series but the Kansas City Royals will be better than you think. Mark Teahen was a good player for them last year but has no help in the lineup. This season they have newcomers Alex Gordon and Ryan Shealy. The Royals are improving; unfortunately they play in the hardest division in baseball so they won't win quite enough games.