Cleveland has already handed out its local awards, and now two Guardians are chasing something even bigger on the national stage.
Cade Smith and Parker Messick both picked up honors over the weekend from the Cleveland BBWAA chapter, but the real intrigue is what comes next. Smith won the Bob Feller Man of the Year Award, the club’s local stand-in for team MVP, while Messick earned the Frank Gibbons-Steve Olin Good Guy Award for the player who makes life easier for the media.
Those are nice nods. The bigger prize, though, is the set of BBWAA awards that could land in either player’s hands.
Smith’s case starts with a season that turned him into the kind of closer a team can build around. In his first full year in the role, he saved 41 regular-season games, worked in nine of 11 postseason games and kept racking up strikeouts. As Paul Hoynes said, “it seemed like he pitched every day, three straight years with 100 or more strikeouts, and a microscopic era.”
That workload and production have put him in the mix for the first BBWAA Reliever of the Year award, where he is a finalist alongside Tampa Bay’s Brian Baker. The two finished tied in saves, but the road to those numbers was not the same.
Baker pitched for a Rays team loaded with offense in the American League East, while Smith was living in a much tighter world. Joe Noga put it this way: “the Guardians were always locked in a one run or two run game, he was always being relied on to come in and close out games that were close.”
That’s the difference here. Smith wasn’t just collecting saves; he was doing it in the kind of pressure cooker that asks a closer to slam the door over and over again.
Messick’s path to award consideration has a different feel, but it’s just as strong. Around the clubhouse, his Good Guy Award win was no surprise.
His locker was near the door, he was always accessible, and he never made reporters wait around. Noga summed it up simply: “He made life easier for the reporters as the season went on,”
On the field, Messick backed up the reputation with a season that jumped off the page. Hoynes laid out the line: “12-9 in 32 starts with a 2.56 ERA and 193 strikeouts, 186 1/3 innings. Just did a great job .217 batting average against by the opposition.”
His toughest competition may come in the AL Rookie of the Year race, where Kansas City’s Kevin McGonigle - second in the AL in bWAR - fits the mold of the everyday player voters often lean toward. Hoynes pointed to that history, saying, “these awards usually go to an everyday guy like a McGonigle.” Even so, he added, “I think Messick’s got a great chance.”
That’s because Messick’s season came with a built-in surprise. He began the year without a guaranteed rotation spot and finished it as a Cy Young finalist. That kind of rise is exactly what makes an award case feel real.
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Guardians Could Face A Tough Young Talent Decision This Winter
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Steven Kwan is likely to draw the loudest speculation, though, simply because his looming free agency makes him an obvious talking point around the league. For Cleveland, the question is less about whether rumors will follow and more about how aggressively it wants to listen if rival clubs start calling on a player who has become central to the rosters identity. [Read more 🡒]