Milwaukee’s Pat Murphy first to win 3 straight Manager of Year awards. Will Venable takes AL honor

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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Stephen Hawkins, The Associated Press