Kansas City Royals: 3 reasons Mike Matheny should be next Royals manager

After Ned Yost’s announced his retirement after this season, promoting Mike Matheny to manager for the Kansas City Royals is the right move.

A quick retrospective of Yost’s years at the helm of the Kansas City Royals is truly like the opening line from Charles Dickens’ novel “A Tale of Two Cities”. That story opens by stating, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. A young team when Yost took over won around 44 percent of their games in his first three seasons followed by the first winning record in several years by the squad.

Then there were back-to-back trips to the World Series in ’14 and ’15, the latter of those bringing back the title to Kansas City for the first time in 30 years. The Royals played .500 ball the next two seasons before re-pushing the youth movement button which has led to consecutive 100 loss seasons.

I find it admirable that Yost stuck around this year knowing that it was going to be rough. He knew that bringing in a new manager to oversee a lost season would be unfair to the new skipper.

We move on to who should captain the Royals ship as we head into 2020. The writing was on the wall with the addition of Mike Matheny as a Special Advisor for Player Development after the 2018 season. Keep in mind this was exactly Yost’s role with the club before he took over the reins in 2010.

There are other candidates from within the organization but Matheny is the best fit based on his positive and negative experiences while the skipper for the cross-state St. Louis Cardinals.

Here are 3 reasons why:

Matheny had tremendous shoes to fill taking over for Tony La Russa.

Cardinal fans are not used to prolonged losing which is more pressure. Matheny never oversaw a team that played under .500 ball. Even the year he was let go by St. Louis, he still had a winning record.

An important trait for the next skipper of the Kansas City Royals is to have a leader who is used to winning. During a five-year run as a player with the Cardinals between 2000-2004, he was part of a team that went to the playoffs four times and made it to the World Series.

As a manager, Matheny’s winning percentage is 55 percent and his teams made the playoffs four times including a National League pennant in 2013. A 100-win season in 2015 led to Matheny finishing second in the NL Manager of the Year award voting.

Matheny can bring the confidence of playing for a winner and leading a winner to the clubhouse. This will be a valuable tool for the players on the current roster who have been through two very dark seasons. He will connect with the young players coming up through the minors that have experienced championship success as well.

One trait that is hard to replicate in a clubhouse is a winning attitude.  Matheny has the track record to earn the respect of the Royal players who are focused on getting back in the playoff hunt.

History has shown that catchers make for great managers.

A catcher for the majority of his career, Matheny can also bring the field general knowledge to the team. Being involved in every play, reading and acting on scouting reports for multiple hitters on opposing teams and constant interaction and knowing how to handle umpires are useful skills to have.

Matheny won four Gold Gloves in a six-year span which puts him in elite standing along with other catchers such as Molina, Johnny Bench, Charles Johnson, Ivan Rodriguez, and Salvador Perez.

Not only is he the Royals leader in games managed and won, but Yost is also a former catcher as well. So are current major league managers AJ Hinch, Joe Maddon, Brad Ausmus, Bob Melvin, Scott Servais, and Bruce Bochy.

The list of former catchers who have managed World Series winners in the prior 20 years is pretty impressive. Along with the Royals’ Yost, the checklist includes Joe Torre, Joe Girardi, Maddon, Bochy, Mike Scioscia, and Bob Brenly. Between all of these skippers, the trophy has been won by teams with former catchers leading the way 61 percent of the time.

Matheny also appears to be a Dayton Moore kind of guy. He is strong in his faith and wrote a manifesto years ago that many people still refer to as groundbreaking. In it, he discusses the importance of building young men of character, putting family first, and teaching responsibility to name just a few of the areas he hits on. The Matheny Manifesto is used by many youth sports organizations around the country as a guide for parents.

So while we are still relatively fresh from hearing all the negative stories out of St. Louis, there are still plenty of quality traits being toted by those who have worked directly with Mike Matheny. He has a proven track record as a winner and this is exactly what the Royals would inject into their atmosphere.