John Kelly Named Lou Brown Award

After an off-season of fast and furious blockbuster trades the spawned the most successful season in team history, Kelly’s Heroes’ John Kelly has won the 2017 Lou Brown Award and the title of Manager of the Year.

Kelly’s Heroes finished 2016 with their third straight season under .500 and were in the midst of a slow-burn rebuild. At the time they had one of the strongest farm systems the CPL had ever seen and looked well on their way to bringing to fruition their plan of drafting and farming a dominating team of young studs that would rule the NL West- and perhaps the entire NL or CPL- for years to come…albeit they were probably still a few years away from that. But, as firecracker owner JK is wont to do, he threw that plan into the river and decided to do a significant roster flip when he saw an opportunity to win sooner.

Here’s a riddle, what do these 14 players all have in common?:

Matt Adams, Dustin Pedroia, Jed Lowrie, Adrian Beltre, Brad Miller, George Springer, Jayson Werth, Tyler Thornberg, James McCann, Richie Martin, Marcos Diplan, Alvaro Seijas, Forrest Wall, and Kevin Kiermairer.

Give up? Those are the only 14 players who were on Kelly’s Heroes roster at the 2016 trade deadline that were still on that team at the end of the 2017 Playoffs. In other words, JK turned over 81% of his roster in the last 15 months.

JK made this plethora of moves when some other teams in the CPL- such as Fajita Eaters, Motley Shue, and, most notably Baby Seals, decided that their competitive window was closed and they wanted to move some of their stud players for stud prospects. JK jumped at the opportunity of having more than one big-time seller, and with that enormous turnover JK bought himself some terrific pieces. Guys like Madison Bumgarner and Clayton Kershaw. Corey Kluber and Christian Yelich.

The Kelly’s Hero Frankenstein team, a monster of a team constructed with parts from other teams, would go on to post their best-ever CPL season. In fact, they paced the entire CPL in wins (228) and nearly set an all-time CPL record for winning percentage (.705), as was now infamously pointed out by JK himself in a front-page article. Kelly’s Heroes won the NL West and the #1 seed in the playoffs.

Between the 2016 and 2017 CPL Seasons, Kelly’s Heroes saw their team improve by an astounding 91 wins, which really is quite remarkable.

But let’s be honest, “Manager of the Year” embodies the owner who not only had on-field success (in particular a significant boost in success from last year to this), but also did the best job of balancing the ability to trade, scout, pickup, and draft players, and once again in 2017 JK was heavily involved in all of those aspects with his team. He continues to be a model owner with a strong desire to win, and one who is not afraid to make the big moves- enormous moves- that may scare off lesser owners. Although he did not accomplish the goal of winning the Kelly’s Heroes’ first-ever CPL championship in 2017, JK achieved a hell of a lot over the last year and has set up his franchise for loads of success over the next few.

Congratulations to JK on his second Lou Brown Award (2009).