Everybody recovered yet?
Yes, Tuesday night offered yet another reminder that sports is better than everything, and it reinforced for this east coast transplant that playoff baseball in the Pacific Time Zone is pretty damn enjoyable. Out here in Los Angeles the game actually finished the same day it started. (Though still not soon enough for some people.) Meanwhile, at Kaufmann Stadium, fans were fortunate to be a part of the type of delightful, madcap, unbridled pandemonium that only comes from your first taste of real success in nearly three decades. The story of the Royals all season long was their quest to end the longest active playoff drought in major American pro-sports. And now, thanks to their glorious 12 inning walk-off victory, we can finally put that storyline to bed, and have a new one ready for their Divisional Series with the Angels.
Namely, the fact that Ned Yost is asleep at the switch.
The fact that so much pent-up Royals joy was followed almost immediately by a steady stream of outright disgust for their manager, tells you everything you need to know about Yost's performance on the biggest stage he's seen thus far. Kevin Draper did an outstanding job recapping the carnage, and really it's hard to know where to begin. The harebrained double steal? The decision to use a fatigued starter in a high-leverage relief situation despite one of the best bullpens in baseball? Or maybe it was the repeated use of a tactic so widely mocked and discredited that Brian Kenny was hip to it a year ago. Yost was a mere hit-and-run away from completing "Stubborn Old School Manager Bingo" just one game into his playoff career.
Not surprisingly, once the baseball world caught its breath, it was open season. Twitter tried to figure out just how many words you can rhyme with "bunt", Pedro Martinez counseled Yordano Ventura while working through his own Grady Little flashbacks, and really thoughtful scribes started to write some really blunt headlines. (Be on the lookout for my companion piece, submitted to Buzzfeed just hours ago: "14 household appliances more qualified than Ned Yost to manage the Royals.")
That last line probably seemed like a cheap shot. But here's the thing, thanks to the good people at Fangraphs, we have charts and statistics that can plot out the course of a baseball game. And wouldn't you know, when you take a look at Tuesday night's opus, every single sacrifice bunt completed by the Royals actually reduced their chances of winning. Ned Yost, with just about every decision he made on Tuesday, made it more difficult for his club to make the trip to Anaheim. That's not hyperbole, and it's not snark, it's just math, which I'm afraid to say, is no friend to the man calling the shots for the Royals.
Ned Yost has been a target for Royals fans all season long.
Of course, now I can practically hear a chorus of voices rising in Kansas City. "Not a fan of Yost? Welcome to the party." Yes, just like the beauty of Kaufmann, and the outstanding barbecue, the Ned Yost follies were, until recently, something that only the locals truly understood. One might think that a manager who has, whatever his faults, managed to consistently improve the team's win total year after year might have built up at least a certain reservoir of goodwill from a perpetually thirsty fan base. But somewhere amidst the head scratching strategic failures, the prickly handling of the media, and the truly maddening decision to call out the team's long suffering supporters, Yost appears to have lost much of the KC movement, and after Tuesday's truly inspired display of blundering into success, he shouldn't expect them to come back around any time soon.
Royals fans are getting a free life lesson that all of us would do well to take to heart. Just because someone is in charge, doesn't mean they have the foggiest idea what they're doing. A record label once rejected the Beatles, Blockbuster decided not to acquire Netflix, and an entire team of film-makers decided that this was a good idea. Experience does not always equal wisdom, and some of the worst decisions in human history have come from people who really ought to know better. Perhaps we should be thankful that the only real damage Ned Yost can do is to spike George Brett's blood pressure.
One of the best parts of sports in general, and baseball specifically, is the meritocratic nature of the game. In the "real world", you can hang around at your job a little longer if you're charming, or handsome, or married to the boss's daughter. But on the diamond? If you're struggling to field your position or hit your weight, then it's time to hit the bricks. That's not cruel, that's the business you chose. And it's only fair that the men making the lineup card be held to the same standard as the men who are on it. Up until recently, this has been quite hard to do. Sure, calling for the manager's head is a baseball tradition, as well worn as peanuts, Cracker Jack, and forcing crotchety old men into ill-fitting polyester. Until recently, we really haven't had the tools to sufficiently hold these field generals to account. Now, thanks to the explosion in data collection, and measurement, we can track every lineup change, document every replay challenge, evaluate every call to the bullpen, and put together a real picture on how a manager is helping, or hurting his team. Sure, there's still plenty of room to argue about the results, but at least now we have more information to argue about.
It's one thing to claim, as so many have since we first started keeping score, that "I could handle the team better than this clown!" Now, in 2014, we have the information to prove that this may in fact be the case. What a time to be alive! And sure, none of this helps Royals fans, who have to prepare themselves to ride the Ned Yost roller coaster all over again on Thursday night. But there's two pieces of information that should offer at least some consolation. One is that sometimes teams play well enough to overcome even the most incompetent leadership. Who knows, maybe the Royals have thirty years of magic in the tank. And the second? Well, Yost isn't the only manager who struggles with strategy. In fact, it sadly seems to be part of the job description.
Let that be another lesson to us all. Just because we're getting smarter, doesn't mean we don't still have a lot to learn.
