NEW YORK — Joe Girardi is the NL Manager of the Year. Oh, by the way — he's available.

Six weeks after he was fired by Florida, Girardi won the award Wednesday for keeping the rookie-laden Marlins in contention nearly all season. Jim Leyland took home AL honors after a quick turnaround with the Detroit Tigers.

A rookie skipper himself, Girardi beat out Willie Randolph of the New York Mets by a comfortable margin to become the first Manager of the Year with a losing record.

"I got my opportunity and I made the most of it," Girardi said. "I don't know if vindication is a good word, just because as a manager, you want to manage."

He received 18 of 32 first-place votes and totaled 111 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Randolph got eight first-place votes and 81 points.

"It's nice that people who watch the game every day understood what we accomplished," Girardi said, adding he wasn't particularly surprised to win the award. "We had a lot of good things happen."

Leyland turned around the long-moribund Tigers in his first year with the team, leading them to the World Series and their first winning season since 1993. He received 19 of 28 first-place votes and 118 points to top Minnesota's Ron Gardenhire, who was listed first on nine ballots and totaled 93 points.

"I knew that we had something here. I thought it would take longer than it did. This team started believing," Leyland said. "We had good players going into spring training, but we didn't have a very good team. We made ourselves a good team and that's something I'm very proud of."

Playing 22 rookies, Girardi guided the Marlins to a 78-84 finish and had them in the playoff race until a late-September fade — a surprisingly competitive performance for a team that was expected to lose at least 100 games.

Florida had a $15 million opening day payroll, the lowest in the major leagues by more than $20 million.