Cleveland Indians: Top 5 managers in team history

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• 721-591 record
• Two-Time American League Champion
• Five-Time American League Central Champion
• 27-25 Playoff Record
• Second all-time on Indians managerial win list

While he did not win a World Series, no manger in Cleveland Indians’ history was better than Mike Hargrove.

Hargrove took over midway through the 1991 season in which Cleveland finished an embarrassing 57-105. From there, the team began to improve. The Indians won 76 games in both 1992 and 1993 and where in the thick of the postseason race at 66-47 when the 1994 season was cut short due to the infamous strike.

In 1995, Hargrove led the Indians to a 100-44 season to clinch the American League Central. They swept the Boston Red Sox in the first-ever ALDS and beat the Seattle Mariners in a six-game ALCS to advance to the World Series for the first time since 1948. They’d lose the series in six games to the Atlanta Braves but continued their success the next four years.

The Indians won the AL Central in 1996 but were knocked out by the Baltimore Orioles in the ALDS.

In 1997, Cleveland again won the division and defeated the Yankees in the ALDS and in the ALCS, got their revenge on the Orioles to get back to the World Series. There, the Indians took the Florida Marlins to Game 7 where they’d lose in heartbreaking fashion as Edgar Renteria hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the 11th.

Cleveland would win the division in both 1998, where after defeating the Red Sox in the ALDS they fell in six-games to a 114-win Yankees team in the ALCS and in 1999 where Boston defeated them in the ALDS.

After the season 1999 season, Hargrove was shockingly let go by general manager John Hart. He went onto manage the Orioles from 2000-02 and the Mariners from 2005-07.