Vaeth deserved to win FL’s Manager of Year award
It was announced last week that Wild Things first baseman Andrew Czech and pitcher Kobe Foster won the Frontier League’s top two individual awards, the Most Valuable Player and Pitcher of the Year, respectively, in a vote of the independent league’s coaches, front office personnel and media.
The awards for Czech and Foster were well-deserved and came during a season in which the competition was plentiful, especially for MVP. There were three or four other players who put up what would have been considered MVP-caliber numbers in other years.
There was, however, one award that should have gone to a member of the Wild Things but didn’t: Manager of the Year.
Washington’s Tom Vaeth previously won the top manager award in 2022, when the Wild Things went 62-34 and won the West Division title by nine games. Vaeth shrugged off the suggestion that he should have won Manager of the Year this season because, as he says, the award is a “popularity contest.” He’s right, to an extent. There are some coaches in the league who will never vote for “that guy” because they don’t like his personality, or the way he handles his team or some perceived personality flaw. Or maybe the other guy just wins too much.
Windy City’s Tom Carcione won Manager of the Year this season after taking a ThunderBolts team that went 38-60 last year to 55-47 this year and to within two runs of its first playoff appearance since 2010. It was a solid choice. Carcione got everything he could out of the ThunderBolts.
My only misgiving with the award is this: Did Carcione, or any other manager in the history of the Frontier League, ever have to rebuild his pitching staff, especially the starting rotation, at midseason? Vaeth did, and Washington still won the Central Division championship by 4½ games. And the Central was the league’s best division.
Washington lost four starting pitchers – Andrew Herbert, Hector Garcia, Zach Kirby and Maddox Long – leave after having their contracts purchased by major league organizations. Kirby has since returned and will start Game 1 of the playoffs tonight at Florence.
The Wild Things also had their closer, Tyler Davis, picked up, along with middle-of-the-order hitter Graham Brown.
I have covered the Frontier League for 24 years, and can’t recall any other team losing that many impact players, especially starting pitchers, in one season. And finding replacements is harder than it has ever been, especially in late-June, when Washington had two starting pitchers picked up in less than 24 hours.
At that point in the season, every decent pitcher at a major college program who ran out of eligibility is expecting, or hoping, to get drafted in July, so they don’t want to play independent ball, thinking it might hurt their draft stock. Of those who do get skipped over in the draft, many of them shun independent ball, opting to post and send out videos of their pitching, sometimes while they’re not facing competition. Bad pitches can easily be edited out.
So the available pool of talent that Vaeth had to rummage through to assemble a pitching staff at midseason was NCAA Division III arms and players who were already released by other independent teams because of poor performance. This is what Vaeth pieced together a rotation from, along with a couple of Wild Things relievers who were converted to starting roles.
Then he had to pick up relief pitchers from the scrap heap, just to make it through a series of games. When the pitching staff was its thinnest, Washington played five games against Joliet in three days. Some of those games weren’t pretty.
Somehow, Vaeth held the whole operation together. The Wild Things used 18 different starting pitchers in 101 games. And managed to lead the league in ERA. That’s almost an impossible accomplishment, and shows just how dominant the pitching staff was that Vaeth put together and started the season with in May.
That’s a manager who gets my vote and should have gotten more from the league.
• Former Canon-McMillan standout pitcher Cameron Weston has a new team.
Last week, Weston, who made his major league debut this season with the Orioles and spent two short stints with Baltimore, was designated for assignment. Within 24 hours he was claimed off waivers by the New York Mets.
Weston made his Mets debut over the weekend, pitching two scoreless innings and striking out five, for Class AAA Syracuse.
• The WPIAL announced Tuesday the sites for several of its fall sports championships. With its expansion to six classifications this year, the girls volleyball finals will be played over three days, Nov. 5-7, at Peters Township High School.
The boys golf individual finals will be played at Sewickley Heights Country Club (Class 3A) Oct. 5 and Oakmont Country Club (Class 2A) Oct. 6. The boys team championships will again be held at Cedarbrook Golf Club on Oct. 13.
The girls Class 2A and 3A golf finals are scheduled for Sept. 28 at Hillcrest Country Club in Lower Burrell on Sept. 28. The team championships will be played at Valley Brook Country Club on Oct. 6.
The cross country finals will be returning to White Oak Park, field hockey will be played at North Allegheny High School and girls individual tennis at North Allegheny and Bethel Park. The girls tennis team championships will be held at W&J’s Swanson Tennis Center.
The WPIAL has not yet confirmed its championships for football and soccer.
Sports editor Chris Dugan can be reached at dugan@observer-reporter.com