Kansas City Royals: The next manager cannot be a stop gap

On Monday morning, Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost announced his retirement. Sherman will need to find the right manager and here’s why.

After 10 seasons at the helm of the Kansas City Royals, Ned Yost has announced that he will retire at the end of the season. With five games to go and new ownership set to take over in November, John Sherman already had his hands full with a roster that has more holes than a slice of swiss cheese. That being said, this team does have a few pieces that they can build around and a boatload of promising young pitching prospects.

With rumors already swirling about who the next manager might be, one thing is for certain. Sherman needs to find a permanent replacement. As with any sport, a new coach or manager in this case, also means new assistant coaches. An entire managerial staff dedicated to the development of a single team can derail their success, especially with younger players.

With the Royals all about the future right now, a temporary hire while Sherman gets acclimated to life as an owner of a Major League Baseball team would not be a wise decision. The team will likely be seeing the promotion of guys like Brady Singer, Jackson Kowar, Kris Bubic, Daniel Lynch and several others within the next couple of years. A rotating pitching coach with different messages and beliefs in analytics can confuse these guys which is the last thing Royals fans would want to see given what has transpired the last two seasons.

Look, I admire Yost for sticking it out until he determined that the Royals appeared to be on the upswing. That alone says a lot about him as a human being. But the fact of the matter is that the team has a chance to be very good again in just a couple of years. Granted, it will take some outside help via free agency which we could spend another 500 words discussing.

But Sherman needs to take his time and find the right guy to lead this young crop of players already on the roster and prospects that will be making their way to the big leagues shortly. Personally, I think the move comes at a perfect time. New ownership and new coaching staff can completely change any previously written narratives about the Kansas City Royals as an organization.