Kansas City Royals: Seven potential successors to Ned Yost

Ned Yost has managed the Kansas City Royals since the 36th game of the 2010 season when he took over for Trey Hillman. In that time, he’s led the Royals to three winning seasons, captured two American League championships, and won the World Series in 2015, the franchise’s second title and first in 30 years.

After going 58-104 in 2018, the Kansas City Royals are currently on pace to finish 2019 with a record of around 66-96. Ned Yost, the winningest manager in team history, will be 65 in August and almost died in November of 2017 after an accident that left him with a shattered pelvis.

In short, there’s nothing left for Yost to prove.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for Yost managing the Royals as long as he wants as I think he’s earned it. He hasn’t done anything egregious in his tenure that would have anyone calling for his head on a platter. As long as he and general manager Dayton Moore and owner David Glass can make it work, then those three should continue working together.

Yet I’m sure the losing is taking a bit of a toll. While Yost has over 300 more wins managing the Royals than the next guy on the list, Whitey Herzog, Yost also has the most losses managing the Royals–by more than 300. In fact, he has lost 353 more games than Tony Muser, 784 to 431.

A managerial change should happen within the next couple of seasons. For the rest of this article, I take a look at seven potential successors–and no, Mike Matheny isn’t one of them, though he was one of the over 30 total coaches and managers I considered before whittling the list down to seven. (By the way–that last Matheny-should-replace-Yost article? It was a joke,which made fun of St. Louis sports teams.)

Let’s start with the return of a son of a longtime member of the Kansas City Royals organization.