Bisons Candaele, Smith given post-season honors

Minor League Baseball today announced that Buffalo Bisons manager CASEY CANDAELE has been named the Triple-A East Co-Manager of the Year and SS KEVIN SMITH has been named a Triple-A East’s postseason All-Star Shortstop.

Candaele, who shares the honor with Durham’s manager Brady Williams, led the Bisons to their first division championship since 2005 with a 71-46 record to claim the Triple-A East Northeast Division title. The team’s .609 winning percentage is the highest in the last 20 years in Candaele’s first season at the helm.

The Bisons won 43 home games this season, tied for the third-most home wins across Minor League Baseball. He led the club to a 29-13 record while calling Trenton Thunder Ballpark home, before the team returned to Buffalo on August 10. Their .690 winning percentage in Trenton, NJ was the second-highest in the minors when the team left the Garden State.

Candaele managed the team to a modern era record 12-game winning streak from August 29 to September 10. Over that stretch, the Bisons went from two games behind Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in the Northeast Division to five games in front, on the way to the first-ever Northeast Division crown. The 15-5 record over the final 20 games of the regular season helped the team win the division by three games over the RailRiders.

Buffalo also finished the season in second place in the Triple-A ‘Final Stretch’ postseason tournament with an 8-1 record. That included eight straight victories to conclude the season, with four wins against Syracuse in the final series of the year. The Bisons also finished the year with the best team batting average in the 20-team Triple-A East at .262, and the second-best team ERA of 3.46 among all 30 teams in Triple-A.

Candaele is the fifth Bisons manager in the modern era to earn Manager of the Year honors, joining Marc Bombard (1992), Joel Skinner (2000), Eric Wedge (2001) and Marty Brown (2004).

Smith played in 94 games for the Bisons in his first season at Triple-A, sitting in top 10 among several offensive categories in Triple-A East throughout the season. He finished the season tied for seventh in home runs (21), and fifth in RBI (69). He also led the Herd in both of those categories among qualified batters this season.

The 25-year-old made 66 starts at shortstop with Buffalo in 2021, making nine errors with a .968 fielding percentage at the position. He also had just one error in 17 starts at third base, totaling 150 innings for a .979 fielding percentage.

Smith recorded a 21-game on-base streak from May 12 to June 8 for Buffalo, batting .314 (22-70) with 12 runs scored, six home runs, 16 RBIs and 12 walks over that stretch. It would only be challenged by a 17-game hitting streak in July where the infielder batted .418 (28-67) from July 10-30. He added six homers and 15 RBIs during the streak to help him hit .317 overall in July.

The former 4th round pick in the 2017 Draft had his contract selected by the Toronto Blue Jays on August 18 and made his Major League debut the same day against the Washington Nationals. Smith appeared in 18 games for the Blue Jays, recording his first career Big League hit on August 20 against the Detroit Tigers.

Smith becomes the first Bisons player to receive a postseason All-Star award since catcher Danny Jansen in 2018. He’s the sixth modern era Bisons shortstop to receive the award, joining Felix Fermin (1988), Carlos Garcia (1992), Damian Jackson (1996), Jolbert Cabrera (1998) and Jhonny Peralta (2004).