NL Manager of the Year: Colorado Rockies' Jim Tracy

Jim Tracy didn't even need a whole season to earn the NL Manager of the Year Award, or to earn a three-year extension.

Tracy, who took over for fired Clint Hurdle in late May, became the second manager to win this award after taking over a team in the middle of the season. The other was Jack McKeon, who took over the Florida Marlins early in 2003 and led them to a World Series title.

Shortly after Wednesday's announcement of the Manager of the Year award, the Rockies announced that Tracy had signed an extension through 2012, which had been expected for a few weeks.

Tracy was picked first on 29 of the 32 ballots submitted, from two writers in each NL city. On a 5-3-1 voting system, Tracy earned a total of 151 points, easily outpolling Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa, who got two first-place votes and 55 points. Dodgers manager Joe Torre finished third, collecting the remaining first-place vote and 33 points. In all, eight managers were named on ballots, and none of them were listed on all 32.

---

---

When Tracy took over the Rockies on May 29, the team was 18-28, 14 games out of first place. They soon won 11 games in a row, jumping back into the race. They went 74-42 under Tracy over the remainder of the season, closing to within one game of the first-place Dodgers before finishing three games back, taking the wild card.

Tracy helped Troy Tulowitzki bounce back from his slow start, suggesting that the shortstop adjust his stance. Tulowitzki was hitting .227 when Tracy took over, and he hit .322 with 27 homers and 77 RBI the rest of the way. Tracy also settled what had been a revolving-door infield situation, playing Clint Barmes at second base and Ian Stewart at third, over the slumping Garrett Atkins.

How They Voted
Voting for 2009 NL Manager of the Year (5 points for a first-place vote, 3 for second, 1 for third):
Player, Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
Tracy, Rockies	29	2		151
La Russa, Cardinals	2	13	6	55
Torre, Dodgers	1	7	7	33
Bochy, Giants		5	3	18
Cox, Braves		3	6	15
Manuel, Phillies		2	4	10
Gonzalez, Marlins			4	4
Black, Padres			2	2

A month into Tracy's tenure, there was an obvious difference to the Rockies players in the atmosphere around the team.

"It's hard to say something good about the new manager without saying something bad about the old manager," Todd Helton told FanHouse in June. "I have a lot of respect for Clint and what he did. That being said, Tracy knows what he's doing. That was pretty apparent from the beginning."

Closer Huston Street said at the time that Tracy "added a new discipline. It was something that the team had lost."

La Russa finished second for a record sixth time, to go with the four times that he has won the award. He won in 1983 with the White Sox, in 1988 and '92 with the A's and in 2002 with the Cardinals. He previously finished second in 1989, 1990, 2000, 2004 and 2005.

Torre's streak of reaching the postseason and not getting much consideration for manager of the year continued. He has taken his team to the playoffs 14 years in a row, but he has not won the Manager of the Year Award since 1998. In the 11 years since, he's gotten just 14 first-place votes.