Royals Report: KC Giving Away Games By Starting Chris Young

The KC Royals are just giving games away by starting Chris Young. Young once again got bombed for four home runs in the Kansas City Royals 8-3 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays Tuesday night at the Rogers Center.

The KC Royals fell to 43-40 and 7.5 games behind the Cleveland Indians in the AL Central. The Toronto Blue Jays improved to 47-39 and have pulled within 2.0 games of AL East leader Baltimore Orioles.

The fact is, I’m pretty disgusted with the Kansas City Royals play on the road. The Royals are an unacceptable 16-29 away from Kauffman Stadium. Aside from the clear mental issues that the team has when they leave home, these woes have been compounded by manager Ned Yost‘s bad decisions with respect to his starting pitching.

For example, last night, Ned Yost ruined a solid one-run, 6.0 inning performance from Edinson Volquez by allowing him to pitch too long. Given Volquez’s recent track record, not having anyone up in the pen to begin the seventh inning was managing negligence due to the third time through the order penalty (the well-documented fact that hitter’s success spikes when facing the same pitcher the third time in the same game).

Certainly, Luke Hochevar didn’t get the job done, so the result might have not been much better had he pulled Volquez after allowing one base-runner, but it still doesn’t excuse Yost’s willfully ignoring his recent performances. Expecting Volquez to get through the Blue Jays order a third time in a 1-1 tie game is simply ignoring statistics.

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Yost compounded his mistake by allowing Chris Young to start a game in Toronto against a powerful Blue Jays lineup on Tuesday. A fly ball pitcher who has given up more home runs than any pitcher in baseball (in only 57.2 innings pitched) coming into the game is simply bad management. While Toronto isn’t exactly a bandbox by dimensions, the ball flies well there as we can see from its 120 HR park factor (20% more home runs than the average MLB park).

Either you send Dillon Gee out to make a spot start, or reshuffle your rotation so Young pitches against the Seattle Mariners in Kauffman Stadium. But, sending Young out to pitch in the Rogers Centre is putting your pitcher in a position to fail. Heck, I would rather have seen rookie Brooks Pounders start (whom the Royals called up Tuesday in place of Wade Davis, who went to the 15-day DL).

Yes, Ned Yost is a better major league manager than I will ever be. He’s terrific at managing the psyche of his players and instilling a selfless team ethic in his clubhouse. The KC Royals are also a never-say-die team that has overcome a historic level of adversity in the playoffs. All of that is to Yost’s credit.

But his tactical decision-making can be downright awful at times.

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Chris Young has now given up 26 home runs in 60.1 innings pitched. Just how many times does he have to get his brain beat in before Yost realizes that Young just isn’t cutting it as a starting pitcher? Letting batters see him more than once turns the game into batting practice. A good tactical manager prevents that kind of thing from happening.