Davey Johnson or Dusty Baker? Buck Showalter or Bob Melvin? Or Robin Ventura?

The most valuable player and Cy Young awards usually command the most attention among post-season awards, but this season has been a good year for outstanding managerial jobs, and an unusually high number of legitimately worthy candidates deserve serious consideration for the manager of the year awards.

The managers matter to me because I am a member of a five-man panel that selects the Chuck Tanner manager of the year for the Pittsburgh Rotary Club. We had our first conference call last week and concluded that we had a lot of work to do. We also raised the possibility, because of the abundance of good candidates, of naming a manager of the year in each league. In previous years we named one manager for the major leagues.

The Baseball Writers Association selects a manager in each league based on votes of two panels, one for each league, consisting of two writers from each league city, 28 voters for the American League, 32 for the National. My guess is this year’s BBWAA’s award winners will be Johnson and Showalter.

But why Showalter and not Melvin? That’s a good question, as good as asking why Melvin and not Showalter. Both clearly deserve the award.

Showalter has taken a team burdened with 14 consecutive losing seasons and managed them into a season-long playoff chase. On July 18, when they lagged 10 games behind the New York Yankees in the American League East they didn’t resemble a serious competitor.

But here they are, with four games left in the season, in two races, going into Sunday’s games on the last weekend of the season tied with the Yankees for the division lead and, with the Yankees, a game ahead of the Oakland Athletics in the wild-card standings.

Showalter, who has managed three other teams, has a unique managerial history, not in managing teams to the World Series but in his proximity to the World Series. The season after the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks fired him, they won the World Series, and three years after he involuntarily left the Texas Rangers they went to the World Series and returned last year.

This is Showalter’s second full season with the Orioles, and they have made a remarkable turnaround under him, going from a 69-93 record, fifth-place finish last season to 91-67 and possible division championship this season.

Everyone kept waiting for – expecting – the Orioles to self-destruct this year, a la the New York Mets, the Miami Marlins and the Cleveland Indians, but Showalter kept them running as a finely tuned engine, outplaying even the Tampa Bay Rays, who had been the division’s previous Cinderella story.

The Orioles have had plenty of chances to collapse, but Showalter refused to let them. It seems the longer a game is extended, the better the Orioles’ chances of winning, They have won their last 16 extra-inning games, the longest extra-inning winning streaks since the Indians won 17 straight in 1949, according to Elias Sports Bureau. Ten Baltimore games have lasted 12 innings or more, and the Orioles have won 9.

They have played 5 games of 14 or more innings and won them all. They played consecutive games of 18 and 11 innings and won both. They have a 52-22 record in games decided by one run or two runs. They had a 13-game stretch of one-run games, winning them all, the longest such streak, Elias said, since Toronto won 19 one-run games in a row in 1984.

How about these results that should make opponents wary of getting into extra-inning games with the Orioles? They have won games in 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17 and 18 innings. Elias says it is the first time in major league history that a team has won games in eight different extra innings.

Besides Showalter’s magic touch, one of the secrets of the Orioles’ extra-innings dominance has been their relief corps. In games that have gone extra-innings, the relievers have a 1.37 earned run average. After the ninth inning in those games, the relievers’ e.r.a. is 0.75.

The Athletics, meanwhile, have not played like a platoon of pumpkins. Melvin, in his first full season in Oakland, has directed the Athletics to the brink of the playoffs with a 90-68 record (through Saturday) compared with their 74-88 finish last year. Fired from his previous managing jobs in Seattle and Arizona, Melvin has taken the lowest paying and most inexperienced team in the majors to unexpected heights.

Going into a doubleheader with the Anaheim Angels Sunday, the A’s were 2 ½ games behind the Rangers in the A.L. West and 2 ½ games ahead of the Angels for the second wild-card slot.

Last December, the A’s appeared to make Melvin’s job more difficult, trading their two best starting pitchers, Gio Gonzalez and Trevor Cahill, and their closer, Andrew Bailey. But as the season progressed, the pressure on Melvin intensified even more with the Athletics becoming less experienced as the days slipped by.

They are finishing the season with an all-rookie starting rotation, they have a total of 15 rookies on the roster and they have used 19 rookies over-all during the season, second most to the Chicago Cubs’ 20 and second most in Oakland history (21 in 2008). The abundance of rookies is one of the reasons the Athletics have the lowest payroll in the major leagues, but their $59 million expenditure hasn’t undermined Melvin‘s ability to motivate his players.

Neither has the Athletics’ impotent offense. The A’s were hitting .237 (through Saturday), next to lowest in the A.L., and they had struck out a league-record 1,358 times, fifth most in major league history.

The White Sox haven’t turned their season around; in fact, in the past week, they have threatened to wreck their season. However they end up, though, Ventura has done a creditable job in his first season anywhere as a manager.

The White Sox led the A.L. Central for most of the last two-thirds of the season, moving into first place May 29 in the midst of a nine-game winning streak and staying there for all but eight days until last Wednesday, when the pre-season favorite Detroit Tigers slipped by them. They began Sunday’s games two games behind the Tigers with four games to play.

A 16-year major league third baseman with four teams after never having played in the minors, Ventura was hired by the White Sox, for whom he played his first 10 seasons, as a special assignment instructor June 6, 2011. Four months later, he was named manager to replace the volatile, wacky Ozzie Guillen, who was let go to become manager of the Miami Marlins. Ventura and the White Sox have had a far better season than Guillen and the Marlins.

I don’t think Ron Washington of Texas will get any consideration for the award, but unless the Rangers squander their season-long A.L. West lead, down to 2 ½ games before Sunday, he will have managed the team to three successive division championships with a chance for a third consecutive league pennant and World Series appearance. Not many managers have been there, done that in recent decades.

Davey Johnson just lost his third base coach, Bo Porter, who the other day was named the Astros’ manager, but he hasn’t lost much else this season. After leaving a front-office advisory position to manage the Nationals in the second half of last season (40-43), Johnson has excelled in his first full season in Washington.

The Nationals were expected to be improved this season but not improved so much that they would lead the N.L. East since May 22, more than two-thirds of the season, much of the time with the league’s best record and going into Sunday’s games the majors’ best record.

That Johnson has been able to take a bunch of mostly younger players comes as no surprise. In six full seasons with the Mets, Johnson finished first twice and second four times. The Mets pulled off an unexpected World Series championship under him in 1986.

In Cincinnati he led the Reds to the division’s best record in 1994 but a strike wiped out the playoffs. Just to prove it was no fluke, though, Johnson and the Reds did it again the following season. Johnson also won a division title with the Orioles in 1997.

Following that season he was named A.L. manager of the year – on the day he resigned as the Orioles’ manager. Johnson was embroiled in a dispute with the owner, Peter Angelos, who was slow in letting Johnson know if he would get a contract extension. Johnson, a hard-nosed competitor, decided to resign rather than wait and find out he didn’t have a job for 1998.

Johnson’s 98-64 record in 1997 was the Orioles’ last winning record until this season.

Johnson had one other managing job, with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1999 and 2000. He won no more division titles and gained no new jobs after that term. Early in his 10-year hiatus from managing in the majors, Johnson was rumored to be the victim of being blacklisted. However, earlier this season, he told me he never heard that rumor and didn’t believe it was true.

However, Johnson’s record of consistent success and what he has done this season with the Nationals, it’s curious why he went a decade without a major league managing job. Fired managers far less successful than Johnson seem to be rehired all the time.

Dusty Baker, on the other hand, is a man who can stay employed. From 1993 through this season, two decades, Baker has sat out only one season, 2007 between jobs with the Cubs and the Reds. He has also managed the Giants.

Baker has taken teams to the post-season five times but has never won a World Series. He has had a team in one, the Giants in 2002, but they lost to the Angels in seven games.

The Reds make six post-season teams for Baker. In his fifth season with them, he overcame the lengthy loss of the team’s No. 1 slugger and run producer, Joey Votto. The first baseman missed 49 games from July 16 to Sept. 5, but that period inexplicably coincided with the Reds’ takeoff.

When Votto went down with a knee injury, the Reds had a 50-38 record (.568) and a one-game division lead. In his 49-game absence, the Reds ran up a 33-16 record (.673) and built their lead to 8 ½ games.

Baker himself suffered health problems recently. He was hospitalized with a mini-stroke and an irregular heart beat and was in the hospital when the Reds clinched their second division title in three years Sept. 22.

Because they were that good recently, Baker’s credentials for manager of the year are not as strong as Johnson’s. But allow me to toss two other candidates into the mix. They are Fredi Gonzalez of Atlanta and Clint Hurdle, the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

I mention Gonzalez because he was able to overcome the Braves’ stunning collapse of last September that cost them a post-season invitation. The Braves took command of the N.L. wild-card race early in August and never let go.

The Braves snatched that lead from the Pirates, who seemed well on their way to ending their string of 19 successive losing seasons. They had a 63-47 record Aug. 8. With no warning, however, they went into a tailspin, losing 34 of 47 games, incurring their 81st loss to Homer Bailey’s no-hitter, insuring they could not have their first winning season in two decades.

Does Hurdle merit consideration for that debacle? Not at all, but give the man credit for giving a city hope for a few months and for the future, when the Pirates may actually win enough games to have a winning record and this time maintain it and mean it.

These are won-lost records of teams whose managers are manager-of-the-year candidates through Saturday, September 29:

When a low-payroll team trades one of its better, higher priced players, or a player who is on the brink of becoming a high-priced player, it is usually greeted with a derisive sneer as a salary dump. Given that the Oakland Athletics had traded two of their three best pitchers in 2004, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, with that accompanying view, the Athletics invited a “there they go again” reaction last winter when they traded their two best starters, Gio Gonzalez and Trevor Cahill, and their closer, Andrew Bailey.

Lew Wolff, the man who pays the Athletics’ salaries and other bills, rejects that knee-jerk assessment.

“I guarantee it had nothing to do with payroll,” Wolff said on the telephone last Thursday. “Each move was really well thought out. We just weren’t trading for the sake of trading. Those decisions were not casual. We had a meeting to do with the budget. These were well talked out. I think the team has benefited.”

The Athletics, with their major league-low $59 million payroll, had the best record among wild-card contenders for 12 consecutive days earlier this month and still maintain the second-best record, which means if the season ended today, they would have a spot in the post-season. Never before has the team with the lowest payroll reached the post-season.

This season is another testament to the front-office talent of general manager Billy Beane.

“I think he can do more with a dollar than anybody,” said a grateful Wolff.

Beane, however, doesn’t always emerge from his moves awash in glitter. He holds the distinction of trading this season’s first 20-game winner, Gio Gonzalez, who won 31 games with a 3.17 earned run average for the A’s the past two years. Despite Wolfe’s claim to the contrary, Gonzalez seemed to be traded because he was eligible for salary arbitration for the first time and was due for a hefty salary. As it was, the Nationals signed him to a 5-year, $42 million contract two weeks after obtaining him.

To Beane’s credit, one of the four players he received for Gonzalez has helped offset Gonzalez’s absence. Tommy Milone, a 25-year-old left-hander, has a 13-10 record for Oakland, making him the team’s biggest winner. Right behind Milone at 11-8 is another rookie, 23-year-old right-hander Jarrod Parker.

The A’s most seasoned starter was Brandon McCarthy (8-6), but his season was a cut short by a line drive to the face Sept. 5.

Milone and Parker are not the only benefits the A’s have derived from the trades. In the deal for Cahill with the Diamondbacks, they acquired a relief pitcher, Ryan Cook, who has been a busy and reliable pitcher with a 6-2 record, 14 saves and a 2.38 e.r.a. in 63 games.

And there’s right fielder Josh Reddick, acquired from Boston for Bailey. Reddick, in his first full season, leads the Athletics with 29 home runs and 79 runs batted in.

Last winter’s trades have turned out to be more productive than the 2004 trades of Hudson and Mulder, who with Barry Zito formed the big three of Oakland’s pitching. From 2000 through 2003 the A’s won the division title three times and the wild card once. After they finished second in 2004, they traded Hudson and Mulder.

From Atlanta for Hudson they got pitchers Juan Cruz and Dan Meyer and outfielder Charles Thomas, for Mulder from St. Louis pitchers Dan Haren and Kiko Calero and first baseman Daric Barton.

Thomas played in 30 games and hit .109 in 2005, then was out baseball. Meyer had arm trouble, didn’t pitch for two years and then pitched two unspectacular years for the A’s, mostly in relief, before the Marlins claimed him on waivers.

Cruz spent one season with Oakland, relieving in 28 games, then was traded to Arizona for Brad Halsey, who started an interleague game against San Francisco May 20, 2006, and in the second inning threw a pitch that a designated hitter named Barry Bonds slugged for his 714th home run.

The A’s got more mileage out of the players they got for Mulder. Haren started for them for three years, compiling a 43-34 record. Calero relieved for them for four years, pitching in 179 games. Barton batted .252 in five years with them. Haren and Calero pitched for them in the 2006 post-season after they won the division title.

Now the A’s are looking for their recruits of last winter to play in the approaching post-season.

Wolfe, who has owned the team for eight years, said he has enjoyed his run whether or not the A’s have won.

“I really have enjoyed being in baseball even with our struggles with our venue,” he said, referring to his continuing effort to move the team to San Jose. “I enjoy every aspect of it at this stage in my life. Even in years that we didn’t do well, we had bright spots. It’s been exciting.”

Speaking about his team’s performance this season, he said, “Early in the year Billy laid out a plan for this year and the next two, three years. I didn’t expect this, but I expected the team to be competitive.”

Wolff is especially pleased with the managing job Bob Melvin has done. Melvin, who was hired in June 2011, previously managed Seattle and Arizona, winning a division title in 2007 with the Diamondbacks, but was then fired only 29 games into the 2009 season.

“Melvin is terrific,” Wolff said. “This is an intellectual guy who learns from experience. We couldn’t be more fortunate than to have Melvin and Beane.”

SELIG STILL STALLS ON SAN JOSE

Not everything, however, is rosy in Lew Wolff’s world. There is still that San Jose matter.

“I’m hoping finally to get some decisions sooner rather than later,” he said, “but I’ve agreed not to talk much about it.”

He meant he had promised Commissioner Bud Selig, his college classmate, that he wouldn’t make a fuss over Selig’s excruciatingly long time deciding the issue. The Athletics, playing in an antiquated park in Oakland with a disappearing fan base, want to move 40 miles or so south to San Jose. The Giants oppose the move, saying San Jose is their territory.

The Giants, however, conveniently ignore that the reason San Jose and all of Santa Clara is their territory is that a previous A’s owner, Walter Haas Jr., graciously gave up the Athletics’ share of the territory when the Giants were thinking about moving to Santa Clara. Obviously, in the small minds of the Giants’ owners, one good deed deserves a rotten one in return.

Several years ago a Giants’ managing partner told me the Haas story was an urban myth. If that is true, why are the details of the meeting at which Haas ceded the territory recorded in the minutes of the owners’ meeting? It is the Giants who are the urban myth.

For two and a half years, a committee appointed by Selig has been studying the matter. He has used the committee as an excuse not to make a decision, saying it was still conducting its study. “I haven’t heard Bud say that recently,” Wolff said.

What does Selig say about San Jose? “

“I just talked to Bob Starkey,” the committee chairman,” Selig said on the telephone Friday. “It’s a very complex situation. We’re doing a lot of work on it. I’m not going to speculate on when we might have a decision even though a lot of people would like to know.”

I have suspected that Selig has been delaying hoping that the two teams will work it out between themselves. That, however, will not happen. Owners and officials of the two teams don’t even talk to each other. The Athletics have tried, but the Giants have ignored them.

I have recently come up with another thought. Selig’s treatment of the San Jose dispute is beginning to resemble the way he has treated Pete Rose’s requests for reinstatement from his lifetime ban for betting on baseball. Rose submits an application for reinstatement, and Selig lets it sit. That’s what he’s doing with the A’s application for relocation.

It’s a shameful situation, one that demands that a man being paid $22 million a year make a decision after two and a half years.

“Baseball has its own clock,” Wolff said, his voice filled with resignation.

He added, “The reason we’ve gone younger and made the moves we’ve made is based on our belief that within our ability to keep these players, we’ll have a stadium.”

Meanwhile, the Giants get richer – they have the majors’ sixth highest payroll ($137 million) and the third highest attendance (3.2 million) – and the A’s get poorer – they have the lowest payroll ($59 million) and are 28^th in attendance (1.5 million).

If Selig were to apply his favorite clause – the best interests of baseball – the solution would be simple. If the A’s move to San Jose, baseball will be stronger and the Bay area will be stronger. The A’s can thrive in San Jose, the Giants won’t miss it. But what if the commissioner says no to Wolff? What will he do?

“I don’t have a plan B,” he said, adding he wouldn’t consider moving to another region of the country. “We want to be in the Bay area,” he said, “and until we know the decision we won’t consider anything.”

Does he have a guess as to what Selig will do? “I think Bud will do what’s best for baseball,” he said.

POOR PIRATES PLUMMET PITIFULLY

That thud you heard last Thursday was the Pittsburgh Pirates’ falling back under .500, very likely on their way to a 20^th consecutive season of losing won-loss records.

The Pirates were on their way to a strong season, having a winning record from June 3, moving into first place in the National League Central for a week early in July, leading the N.L. wild-card standings for two weeks later in July and early August, standing 16 games over .500 (63-47) Aug. 8. But the season was too long.

“Stop the season, we want to get off,” they cried, but no one listened, and they had to keep playing. Beginning Aug. 9 through Saturday, they had an 11-30 record. You can’t lose 30 of 41 games and expect to end a 19-year losing streak.

Three weeks ago, when the Pirates had a 70-60 record, I wrote that their magic number was 11 or 12 – 11 to avoid a losing season, 12 to have their first winning season in two decades. Since then they have won only 4 of 21 games.

The disappointment in the Pirates’ clubhouse over the spoiled season has to be too great for manager Clint Hurdle to motivate a comeback that would produce 7 or 8 victories in their remaining 11 games to finish 81-81 or 82-80.

In recent years, when someone would raise the question of the string of losing seasons, players could evade the question by saying, “That doesn’t mean anything to me. I wasn’t here for all of those seasons.” Next season, though, the players who are still in the Pirates’ clubhouse will have to face the questions about 2012. It won’t be easy.

GETTING THE PENALTY RIGHT

The Toronto Blue Jays got it wrong, and Major League Baseball was just as wrong for endorsing the three-game suspension without pay of the Blue Jays’ shortstop Yunel Escobar. The 29-year-old Cuban was disciplined for writing a Spanish term derogatory to gay men on his eye black for a game. There was a better penalty.

Escobar could have been ordered to stand at home plate at Rogers Centre in front of a blackboard, surrounded by thousands of fans, and write on the board 500 times each, in Spanish and English, “I will not write or make any derogatory remarks about gay people or any ethnic or gender group.”

Pete Rose popped up in the news last week. Never far removed from the public consciousness, Rose reminded everyone he is still here by disclosing his latest scheme to make a buck or two.

Derek Jeter popped up, too. Like Rose, he popped up for the reason he usually does. He climbed another step upward in his seemingly endless and extremely impressive journey toward establishing himself as one of the greatest and most honorable players ever. Warning: At this point I’m not exactly sure what I plan to say about Jeter, but I could wind up fawning over him, he’s been that good.

Jeter and Rose wind up in this column together because of recent speculation about Jeter’s chances of eclipsing Rose’s all-time hit record. When Jeter stroked his 200^th hit of the season against Toronto Wednesday night, he had a career total of 3,288 hits. Rose finished his career with 4,256. There’s no sense speculating about those 968 hits because we don’t know how many years Jeter, 38, wants to play.

If Jeter were to play five more years and amass the same number of hits he has had the last five years, which is unlikely, he would be 30 or so short of Rose’s record. Plenty of people, including some baseball officials, would like to see the shortstop snare the record for the same reason people want to see someone break Barry Bonds’ home run record, although the hitter in the best position to do that, Alex Rodriguez, has himself had a steroids-tainted career. People want their heroes to be good guys; Bonds and Rose are not good guys.

Rose’s latest act to raise questions about his character is his decision to consign for auction the document that, in effect, was his baseball death sentence, the 1989 agreement that banished him from baseball. ESPN.com reported Rose’s decision and quoted the auctioneer as suggesting that it could bring $1 million or more.

Having seen collectors spend millions to purchase historical documents and apparel and paraphernalia, I suppose I won’t be surprised if someone bids $1 million or more for Rose’s personal death sentence. It is, after all, the only one that will ever be auctioned. Rose’s auctioneer told ESPN.com that Rose said he signed two copies of the document. Where is the other copy?

I asked Fay Vincent if he had it. Vincent, the former commissioner, was deputy commissioner at the time and signed the document as a witness. He said he didn’t have the second copy.

I asked John Dowd if he had the second copy. Dowd is a Washington lawyer who conducted the Rose investigation for Major League Baseball and nailed Rose for betting on baseball, the game’s cardinal sin. Dowd said he did not have the copy.

I asked an M.L.B. official Wednesday if he knew where the copy was. He said he was pretty sure it was in the baseball offices but didn’t know where and would try find out its resting place. As of the close of business Wednesday, he had not called to say where it was.

It makes sense, however, for it to be in a file cabinet in an office at 245 Park Avenue in Manhattan. M.L.B. is not going to give away or sell its copy, if and when it is found, so Rose has clear sailing to his million or so.

Rose does not admit or deny in the agreement that he bet on baseball. But as soon as the agreement was released to the news media, Rose immediately and publicly denied that he bet on baseball, then kept denying it for 15 years until he wrote a book. He admitted it then for only one reason, the usual Pete Rose reason – to make more money.

Rose’s lying didn’t surprise me. He began his 15 years of lying with a lie to me in spring training the day after he returned to the Cincinnati Reds’ spring training camp from New York, where he had been summoned to a meeting with two commissioners, the departing Peter Ueberroth and the incoming A. Bartlett Giamatti.

I asked him why they wanted to meet with him, and he said they wanted his advice on something. I told him I had heard that it had to do with his gambling, and he replied, “Gambling? Gambling is illegal. I’d have to go to Las Vegas to gamble.”

Now that I think about it, that wasn’t the first lie he told about the matter. He lied to the commissioners the day before when he denied betting on baseball.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the worst lie Jeter ever told was telling his manager and coaches and reporters that he was all right after he had been injured and really wasn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised either to learn that he never lied as a child. A few years ago I met his parents and congratulated them on having done such a good job raising Derek. I was talking about Derek the person, not Derek the player. For now, though, let’s stick to the player.

Whether or not Jeter winds up with more hits than Rose, he has already played himself into the pantheon of the game’s greatest players. His achievements are enhanced by his presence among pantheon players, Yankees’ subdivision.

His major league-leading 200^th hit Wednesday night gave him his eighth 200-hit season, tying him with Lou Gehrig for most 200-hit seasons by a Yankees’ hitter. He is the Yankees’ all-time leader in hits, at-bats, games played, stolen bases and singles. He is 12 doubles shy of Gehrig’s franchise-leading total and third behind Babe Ruth and Gehrig in runs scored. In my growing-up years, the Yankees’ brightest historical markers were Ruth and Gehrig. Now they are Ruth, Gehrig and Jeter.

Jeter is now 10^th on the all-time hits list. According to Elias Sports Bureau, the last time a member of the Yankees was among the top 10 hitters while still active was 1945 when Paul Waner held that distinction. But that was Waner’s last season, and he finished with 3,152 hits.

This season alone Jeter has passed Dave Winfield, Tony Gwynn, Robin Yount, Waner, George Brett, Cal Ripken, Nap Lajoie, Eddie Murray and Willie Mays, cutting in half the hitters who were ahead of him. Still ahead are Eddie Collins, Paul Molitor, Carl Yastrzemski, Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker, Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb and Rose. All of these players are in the Hall of Fame, except, of course, Rose.

At the same time his critics had written him off, advocates of new-age statistics cited numbers that allegedly showed how badly his range at shortstop had deteriorated. In response to that defensive question, a general manager recently – not two years ago – said, “As far as I’m concerned, Jeter’s range goes from where he dived into the third base stands to catch a foul pop to the first base line where he caught a relay throw and threw out Jeremy Giambi at the plate in a playoff game.”