When it comes to AL Manager of the Year for 2012, there are two right answers. (US Presswire)

Perry: Davey Johnson a Hall of Famer?

How do you really choose between them?

One piloted a semi-long-suffering franchise to its first playoff berth since all of you were going to Lillith Fair. The other led his charges to the most unlikely division title in recent memory.

Buck Showalter's 2012 Orioles were coming off a 93-loss season and playing an unbalanced schedule in the presumptive toughest division in baseball. They were almost a unanimous choice to finish last in the AL East. To boot, their only remotely effective starting pitcher (Jeremy Guthrie) had been traded away.

Now consider what unfolded. Thanks to a patchwork rotation, Showalter started 12 different pitchers over the course of the 2012 season. Only one pitcher on the entire staff -- rookie import Wei-Yin Chen -- logged a qualifying number of innings. Instead, Showalter took the most tactically challenging approach to keeping runs off the board -- playing match-ups with his deep bullpen.

On offense, Showalter played a 19-year-old for 50 games (Manny Machado) and a 41-year-old for 28 games (Jim Thome). In early September, he lost one of his core hitters (Nick Markakis) for the remainder of the season because of a thumb fracture. He used 122 different batting orders and 101 different defensive lineups. In an effort to keep making the impossible possible, the front office rostered 52 different players. Showalter's Orioles just kept winning.

In the end, they out-performed what their record should have been based on runs scored and runs allowed by a full 11 games. They turned those 93 losses in 2011 into 93 wins in 2012. Then they pushed the Yankees to the brink in the ALDS. So, yes, Buck Showalter deserves to be AL Manager of the Year.

Or he would if there were no such thing as Oakland's Bob Melvin, who of course claimed the hardware in question. Consider that Melvin's A's barged to the AL West crown despite an opening-day payroll that ranked last in all of baseball (and roughly $100 million less than that of the division-rival Angels). Melvin's A's wound up winning a division that was indeed -- as Showalter's AL East was reputed to be -- the toughest in baseball (teams in the AL West were a combined 54 games over .500 against teams from outside the division, which was tops in all of MLB). Stated another way, the 2012 A's played 91 games against teams with winning or .500 records and just 71 games against losing teams.

In the rotation, Gio Gonzalez had long been traded away. Brett Anderson didn't pitch until late August. Dallas Braden didn't pitch at all. Brandon McCarthy gave Melvin just 111.0 innings, and Bartolo Colon's season ended prematurely because of a 50-game suspension for PED use.

To put a finer point on it, here's Melvin's opening-day rotation: McCarthy, Colon, Tommy Milone, Graham Godfrey and Tyson Ross. And here's Melvin's rotation to end the season: Jarrod Parker, Milone, Brett Anderson, A.J. Griffin and Travis Blackley. Upheaval is what they call it.

In 2011, Melvin's A's won a mere 74 games, so this season they tacked a nice, round "20" onto that total. Perhaps most impressive is that Melvin's charges went 51-25 in the second half, which is good for a lofty win percentage of .671.

And then there's this, courtesy of CoolStandings.com …

That's a chart of the A's odds of winning the division, winning the wild card and making the playoffs by either means. As you may be able glean, the A's chances of winning the AL West cratered to 0.5 percent in late May. And yet they did win the AL West. That's as much of a miracle as anything Showalter achieved this past season.

It seems the functional definition of the Manager of the Year is "he who defies expectations and circumstances, for the better and in the hugest of ways." Showalter and Melvin each did that to impossible extremes in 2012. I ask again: How do you really choose between them?

I don't typically root for ties when it comes to individual awards, but in the curious case of the 2012 AL Manager of the Year Award, it would've been the most appropriate outcome.

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