Kansas City Royals: Mike Matheny should be next Royals manager
By Cullen Jekel
Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost is entering his tenth season in the dugout with the franchise, after landing the gig more than halfway into the 2010 season.
The 64-year-old, who guided the Kansas City Royals to a World Series victory in 2015, may have seen his employer hire his eventual successor in November: Mike Matheny.
Matheny, who played for four franchises during his 13-year career in which he won four Gold Gloves behind the plate, had been fired as the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals merely months before landing with the Royals front office. He took over the Cardinals from Tony La Russa, who retired after winning the 2011 World Series.
In just over six-and-a-half years as the Cardinals skipper, Matheny went 591-474, never posting a losing record (the team was 47-46 when he got canned), winning the National League Central three times, the Wild Card once, reaching the pennant in 2013 and 2014, the former of which his team won before falling to the Red Sox in the World Series.
But he paid the price in 2018 after his last two Cardinals teams failed to make the playoffs and his current club floundered.
Then, suddenly, he landed with a rebuilding club led by an aging manager with nothing left to prove who had just survived a harrowing accident. Had David Glass and Dayton Moore lured him out of other potential managerial gigs by throwing at him the title “Special Advisor for Player Development” as a cover for him getting to know the organization before he takes over for Yost as the franchise’s 20th manager?
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the Royals are super into dudes who write manifestos.
Yet, if the Royals want to get back to winning the World Series, Matheny just might be there guy. And that’s because of the Curse of Scotty Bowman.