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:

Prior to his 2018 firing and complaints about handling the team, there were no major controversies in the Matheny era.

I would urge all Kansas City fans to read an interview he did with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shortly after the firing and there you will see a man who did not blame anyone else about what happened that season. Matheny takes responsibility for the result and was very appreciative of the opportunity he was given.  He was called a “super guy” by the chairman of the team even after the dismissal.

Matheny acknowledges the fine line of keeping a clubhouse together and that all relationships he had were not perfect. The highest level he had been to manager prior to this was at the little league level so there was bound to be a learning curve for learning how to deal with younger players. Despite the stories that came out of St. Louis his last season, Matheny still has the respect of many players and peers. Yadier Molina is on record saying that if the players would have played good baseball in 2018 then Matheny would still be there as their manager.

Albert Pujols lists Matheny as an individual who helped him grow as a player and person when both of them were on the roster for the Cardinals. It isn’t just current players that are appreciative of what Matheny has done. David Bell became manager of the Cincinnati Reds this season and he credits the three years he spent under Matheny’s tutelage as to why he is a major league skipper.

Everyone makes mistakes and when we learn and grow from them we become an even better employee, leader, and person.  No doubt Matheny is ready to prove he can handle a big-league team again.

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.