Cleveland’s Pride: Stephen Vogt Wins 2025 AL Manager of the Year After Remarkable Season with Guardians.NL
Guardians manager Stephen Vogt is 2 for 2.
Vogt was named American League Manager of the Year for the second consecutive year, as voted upon by the BBWAA, after a wild finish to the 2025 season in which the Guardians became the No. 1 story in baseball.
Vogt earned 17 of the 30 first-place votes. Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider finished in second place and received 10 first-place votes. Vogt also became the first manager to win the award in his first two seasons on the job, and the first to win it back-to-back since Kevin Cash in 2020-21. It also means a Cleveland manager has won the award in three of the last four years, with Terry Francona winning in 2022.
“Obviously I feel super honored, the job that everyone did — and I know I played a part in it — but just to overcome everything that we did to win the division, get to the playoffs, I couldn’t be more proud of our players,” Vogt said, again deflecting positive credit as he often does. “Our staff was overworked, but it’s a really cool honor for the entire organization and just a nod to the work that our team did.”
After a 2024 in which almost everything went right, in 2025 Vogt oversaw what could easily be described as a tumultuous season.Expert MLB daily picks: Unique MLB betting insights only at USA TODAY
As of July 8, the Guardians were eight games below .500 (40-48) and 15.5 games behind the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central.
Around the same time, the Guardians lost closer Emmanuel Clase and starting pitcher Luis Ortiz due to Major League Baseball’s gambling investigation, which has since led to charges filed against both pitchers by federal prosecutors.
Then came the trade deadline, when Cleveland jettisoned veteran starting pitcher Shane Bieber and reliever Paul Sewald. It wasn’t the team veering into full sell mode, but it wasn’t a period of buying, either, and it included a near-trade of All-Star left fielder Steven Kwan.
The Guardians persevered through it all, rallying with an incredible September in which they won 20 of 27 games to pull off a historic comeback to punch their ticket to the postseason and repeat as division champs.
Cleveland won 88 games despite an offense that ranked last in the American League with 643 runs scored. Only the Colorado Rockies and Pittsburgh Pirates — two last-place teams that between them averaged 57 wins — scored fewer runs.
The story of the 2025 Guardians became their collective perseverance, with Vogt right in the middle of it.
“Obviously last year [in 2024] we had a very different team, a very different year, and I think this one is so gratifying because I know how hard we worked,” Vogt said. “I know how hard it was to show up every day and at times be positive, and to keep pushing and to keep that smile on your face. … Our entire group showed up in a good mood believing we were going to win.”
