Ned Yost has Created a Baseball Strategy App

A great many words across a great many websites, including this one, have been dedicated to Ned Yost as a manager. For the most part, words like ‘genius,’ ‘visionary’ or even ‘competent’ were not used favorably when referring to Yost. If those words were used at all, it was always in the ironic sense, like a hipster drinking a Pabst while listening to Winger.

Yet, it is Ned Yost who led the Royals to the World Series. While one may second guess some of his decisions, he still took the Royals further than they have been in 29 years, and were a game away from bringing a championship back to Kansas City. Whether or not Yost was more lucky that skilled during that run is irrelevant – he is the first pennant winning manager for the Royals in three decades.

With this success, it would be thought that Yost may have done a few speaking engagements, basked in the afterglow of seeing the Royals return to baseball royalty and enjoyed proving the naysayers wrong. Instead, Yost spent this offseason developing a baseball strategy app. You read that last sentence correctly – Ned Yost developed a baseball strategy app.

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The game, called Ned Yost’s Baseball Academies, is based on learning what to do at each position. You select the position you want to play, then the game asks a series of questions as to where to throw the ball. You have 30 seconds to answer the questions, and as the player increases in level, the questions become increasingly difficult. As Yost said, it is essentially a baseball IQ test.

With kids these days being attached to their smartphones or tablets (wow, that made me sound like an old curmudgeon…) it would make sense that an app would be created to help teach baseball theory. Those kids who want to learn to play baseball, and play it the right way, would be able to use the app to improve their baseball intellect, taking the lessons learned from the games to the ball field.

Ned Yost has left his mark upon the Royals and Kansas City. He is already the all time leader in games managed in Royals history, and sometime next season, will become the winningest manager in team history, barring an unforeseen catastrophe. Yet, this app, which has already won awards, may be his true legacy.

Ned Yost as an innovating baseball mind, finding a way to teach young players proper fundamentals. I like the sound of that.

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