SoMnFan
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- When they were brash and unstoppable, Kansas City Royals skipper Ned Yost went 178 games and did not call a single team meeting. He did pull pitcher Danny Duffy aside once last year, but even that seemed like something Yost didn't want to do. It was back when the Royals were getting into bench-clearing skirmishes, full of badass energy, and Duffy had yelled something that led to a dugout warning that led to Yost getting tossed.
"That's why you've gotta stay quiet!" Yost said to Duffy, who immediately said he was sorry.
"I'm sorry, too," Yost told him. "I love ya, man."
But then a month into the 2016 season, things were not going so well. The reigning world champs were in a slump that would lead them to 11 losses in 14 games, and Yost walked into the clubhouse after a particularly depressing defeat in New York and asked everyone to slide their chairs together and pull in close. It was already the second team meeting of the season.
Yost told them he was proud of them and confident that things were about to turn around. He talked for maybe two minutes, asked if there were any questions, and adjourned.
"All right," Yost said as he clapped his hands. "Here we go."
HE IS UNFAILINGLY optimistic and trusting -- and it drives fans nuts. Yost was Bobby Cox's right-hand man during the Atlanta Braves' glory years in the 1990s, and Cox taught him a thing or two about rash decisions. He used to have this policy: If he was convinced a guy needed to be demoted or benched, he'd wait a week before he'd do anything. By then, oftentimes the player had broken out of his slump, and if he hadn't, at least Cox didn't have any regrets.
"Patience is big," said Yost, who practices the same policy. "These guys know if we keep playing hard, we'll be fine."
Yost said this last week, as the Royals neared the quarter-point of the season hovering around .500 with a city on edge. All around him, there was talk about World Series hangovers, closing windows, and a list of players who needed a one-way ticket to Class AAA Omaha. The Washington Post practically wrote an obit on the Royals this past week, with a headline that read, "The Naysayers Were Right About the Royals."
What they didn't know is that Let-It-Ride Ned already had made one of the biggest moves of the season. He didn't do a darn thing.
On the surface, especially to the media, Yost can come across as an unimaginative grump. He does not bare his soul to the masses like he does for the 25 men in his clubhouse. He was asked last week during a news conference about the importance of a weekend series in Chicago, against the American League Central-leading White Sox, and Yost quickly fired back that every game is important.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the Royals have won three straight series since their trip to the Bronx. Before that four-game series, which they also lost, they'd dropped four series in a row.
In just one week, Kansas City has made up 3½ games on the division leaders. The Royals won five of seven, and showed flashes of what took them to back-to-back World Series: a dominant bullpen, clutch hitting and a smattering of mind-blowing defensive plays.
"It definitely did [make a difference]," first baseman Eric Hosmer said. "When you get that boost of confidence and that message from your manager ... After that meeting, you just kind of hear everyone exhale. That next day, it feels like a fresh start."
Royals first basemen Eric Hosmer congratulates center fielder Lorenzo Cain after his solo home run in the sixth that helped KC beat the Chicago White Sox 2-1 on Saturday. The Royals took two of three games in the series. Dennis Wierzbicki/USA TODAY Sports
IN YOST'S FIRST few years in Kansas City, there used to be a lot of team meetings. The Royals lost at least 90 games in each of his first three seasons from 2010 to 2012. Because they were so bad for so long, a run of futility that far predated Yost, the club was able to stockpile high draft picks, nurture them through the farm system, and hope that one day their promise would pan out and that all of their time together would lead to great chemistry.
Yost played a huge role in that, much as he did in turning around the Milwaukee Brewers in the mid-2000s. He arrived in Milwaukee in 2003, taking over a team that had won just 56 games the previous year, and made them a .500 ball club by '05. Maybe he's patient with players because his former employer wasn't with him. Yost's team was 16 games above .500 in September of 2008, then lost 11 of 16. He was fired, and the Brewers went to the playoffs without him.
The game has gone the way of analytics, but Yost still goes by his gut. He is slow to lose confidence in a player. In 2014, he waited so long to send a slumping Mike Moustakas to Omaha that some fans wondered if he'd ever make it back. Moustakas, who was hitting .152 before his demotion, was recalled about 10 days later. He went on to hit five home runs during the 2014 postseason.
HELL-BENT ON proving that their 2014 World Series appearance wasn't a fluke, the Royals began the 2015 season by winning their first seven games. Their exuberance was so palpable it irked a few teams. They celebrated and fought most games as if it was Game 7 of the World Series.
Fast-forward a year, and Kansas City looks, at times, as if it has lost some of that energy. In the first week of May, the Royals looked tired and defeated. Dave Flemming, the play-by-play announcer for San Francisco, has seen that look before. The Giants won titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014, and every odd year, they've seemingly looked out of sorts.
Flemming believes that extra month of postseason grind, plus the stress that accompanies it and the celebrations that follow, takes a toll on a team.
"It sounds funny because even if you play through October, you still have at least three full months to recuperate, and that sounds like a long time," said Flemming, who also calls games for ESPN. "But I think it's not enough time when you do all that stuff that comes along with winning a World Series. I do think in the Giants' experience it hasn't always manifested itself in the first few weeks. Sometimes they hit a wall in the summer and didn't have enough energy stored up.
"Winning a World Series is a good reason to be tired. But I do think you pay a price that next season."
San Francisco's records in the first month after a World Series season have been 13-13, 15-12 and 9-13.
The Royals insist they are not tired. They do not celebrate and carry on like schoolboys, a la 2015, because they haven't had as much reason to celebrate. By the time they hit New York the second week of May, Yost could see how hard they were trying, and the results just weren't coming. Lorenzo Cain hit three home runs in one game, but the pitching collapsed in a 10-7 loss.
"In New York," Duffy said, "he just said, 'You guys are playing your butts off. Keep doing what you're doing and it's going to happen.'"
ROYALS GENERAL MANAGER Dayton Moore stood at the top of the Royals' dugout last week, impeccably dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, eyeing several reporters waiting to talk to him. "We're fine," he said jokingly before anyone could ask him a question.
Pitcher Tim Lincecum was on the market recently, and the Royals' starting rotation was in desperate need of a boost. The team did not enter the sweepstakes for Lincecum, a former two-time Cy Young Award winner. Moore knew the numbers were abysmal, that three of their starters had an ERA of 4.85 or higher, and two of them -- Kris Medlen and Chris Young -- were on the disabled list.
But he was convinced the club had options in-house. A couple of days later, Dillon Gee, a former castoff with the Mets, threw five solid innings in a 4-1 win against the White Sox. Truth is, Moore didn't need a great rotation in 2015, when Kansas City's starters ranked 12th in the American League in ERA.
But they will need the bullpen to be nearly perfect again. It showed cracks in the first quarter of the season, and the pitcher who has drawn the most ire from fans is Joakim Soria.
Soria was the closer for the Royals years ago before making stops in Texas, Detroit and Pittsburgh. His return to Kansas City, so far, has been disappointing. He carried a 3.63 ERA heading into Sunday, he has been booed by the home crowd, and when Soria enters the game, Twitter blows up with skepticism. Yost inserted Soria on Saturday in Chicago with the bases loaded, no out and Kansas City clinging to a 2-0 lead in the seventh inning. Soria coaxed a double play and pitched two strong innings in a 2-1 victory.
And for a second, Let-It-Ride Ned looked like a genius.
"Ned's an absolute pro," Moore said. "Look, one of the things I'm most proud of is that we've done everything we could to win every single year. I've said the same thing to our baseball operations department, our players, every single year: All of our success is tied together, and we have a small window to win. The window is now. It's the same window it was in 2007, and the same window it is in 2016. Nobody can predict what happens in a baseball game. If you could, nobody would show up. So we just go out, put the best team we can on the field, and go out and play."
FIRST BASE COACH Rusty Kuntz says Yost is by far the most glass-is-half-full manager he has ever worked under. Every day, Yost does what Kuntz calls a fly-by, visiting each player and coach to see how they're doing. The interactions last only about 30 seconds, and they're usually filled with effusive praise even if things are going poorly. But it helps Yost monitor the pulse of his team.
"I think there's a different relationship that has evolved over the past few years between the players and Ned and the staff in general," pitcher Jason Vargas said. "He doesn't have to take care of everybody in here like they're little kids anymore."
During a home stand last week, the Royals did not appear panicked. The clubhouse was filled with the sound of the Backstreet Boys over the speakers. Designated hitter Kendrys Morales, struggling to hit .200, took extra cuts in the batting cage. And Yost made the rounds, checking on each of his children.
They have been together through everything, the losing and the sudden success of 2014 and '15. They know it's still May, way too early to change a thing. People forget, Yost said, that last September, the Royals were supposedly dead. They'd lost 10 of 17, and looked nothing like a team that would need just five games to win the World Series against the New York Mets.
"That was a great experience for us to go through," Yost said with his glass half-full, driving people nuts.
< Message edited by SoMnFan -- 5/23/2016 9:09:31 AM >
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