Baseball America’s John Manuel on honoring Showalter and Duquette tonight

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  Steve Melewski

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  December 09, 2014 5:46 pm

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SAN DIEGO – The Orioles brass will be honored in San Diego here tonight.

Baseball America will host its awards gala and among the winners are Dan Duquette as BA’s Executive of the Year and Buck Showalter as BA’s Manager of the Year. They have just one manager award for all of baseball, so it is not an American League-only award.

John Manuel, Baseball America’s editor-in-chief, told me why their organization chose to honor Duquette.

“For Dan Duquette, four years ago, you’d see him at the…SAN DIEGO – The Orioles brass will be honored in San Diego here tonight.

Baseball America will host its awards gala and among the winners are Dan Duquette as BA’s Executive of the Year and Buck Showalter as BA’s Manager of the Year. They have just one manager award for all of baseball, so it is not an American League-only award.

John Manuel, Baseball America’s editor-in-chief, told me why their organization chose to honor Duquette.

“For Dan Duquette, four years ago, you’d see him at the Winter Meetings and he was almost persona non grata,” Manuel said. “He’d been out of the game for several years. To go from there and where the Orioles franchise was at that time to two playoff trips in three years and 96 wins – they were the best team in the American League for a lot of the season.

“Baltimore, for all the things they went through, that is really why he got the Executive of the Year award. Because it wasn’t an easy road there, especially with the injuries. The way they were able to massage the big league roster, fill holes on a budget and create a consistent winner, we thought that really merited special attention.”

Manuel said Baseball America started it’s Organization of the Year award in 1981 and that Duquette was scouting director for the Milwaukee Brewers when they won three straight, from 1985-87.

The AL champion Kansas City Royals were named Organization of the Year for 2014.

Coming tomorrow, I’ll have more with Manuel as he talks about the Orioles’ minor league prospects.