The top skippers in baseball are being recognized as the winners of the 2025 Manager of the Year Award are being announced at 7 p.m. ET on MLB Network. The honor, which was first given out in 1983, is determined by voting from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
This season’s six finalists for Manager of the Year led their teams to the postseason.
In the American League, the Blue Jays’ John Schneider is a nominee after taking Toronto from worst to first in the AL East. Dan Wilson steered the Mariners to their first division crown since 2001, and the Guardians’ late-season surge to the top of the AL Central is a chief reason why Stephen Vogt might be named MOY for a second straight year.
In the National League, the Brewers’ Pat Murphy is also looking to take home the award for the second consecutive season after Milwaukee finished with the best record in MLB. A win for the Phillies’ Rob Thomson would be his first while the Reds’ Terry Francona could earn this honor for the fourth time, tied for the most in MLB history.
Here’s the schedule for the 2025 Baseball Writers’ Association of America awards set to be announced this week on MLB Network (7 p.m. ET each day):
Read below for more on each Manager of the Year finalist:
Terry Francona, Reds
Already with three Manager of the Year awards on his resume, Francona has repeatedly proven he can make a difference upon arrival. And that was the case in Cincinnati, as the Reds won 83 games and clinched an NL Wild Card spot on the season’s final day. For the third time in his career, the 66-year-old led a club to the postseason in his first season after also doing it in Boston (2004) and Cleveland (2013).
Pat Murphy, Brewers
The thing to remember about Murphy’s 2025 Brewers was how it all began. It was still March and they were 0-4, matching the 1954 Cardinals for the most runs allowed in the first four games of any season in the modern era. Remember the torpedo bat craze? The Brewers had a lot to do with that. So did injuries. Six starting pitchers were on the injured list. And another, Nestor Cortes, whose Brewers tenure began in almost unfathomable fashion at Yankee Stadium with three home runs on three pitches, was a week away from adding to the IL.
Rob Thomson, Phillies
The Phillies had a top-five payroll and entered the season with World Series expectations. But Thomson gets credit for easily winning the NL East, which opened as a three-team race with the Phillies, Mets and Braves. But Thomson had to maneuver though several challenges along the way. There were injuries to Zack Wheeler, Bryce Harper and Trea Turner; José Alvarado’s 80-game suspension for PEDs; issues with disgruntled right fielder Nick Castellanos; a porous bullpen until Jhoan Duran arrived in late July and much more.
John Schneider, Blue Jays
Schneider took a 74-win team and brought them straight to the top of the American League, blowing away every expectation placed on the Blue Jays coming into 2025. Managers of overachieving teams tend to do well in Manager of the Year voting, and when you consider the individual growth that Schneider himself has shown in this job, he’s made an excellent case to become just the second Blue Jays manager in history to win this award and the first since Bobby Cox in 1985.
Dan Wilson, Mariners
In his first full season in 2025, Wilson guided Seattle to a 90-72 record and just its fourth division title in franchise history, which represented a rebound from each of the two prior years, when the Mariners fell short of heightened expectations and finished as the first team on the outside looking in to the playoffs.
