Unlike the Kansas City Chiefs, success hasn’t meant promotions for Kansas City Royals management.
The Chiefs finished the regular season with 10 wins in a row and their first playoff victory since 1994. In January, the Philadelphia Eagles named Doug Pederson, one of the assistant coaches for the Chiefs, their head coach.
But in the case of Kansas City Royals management, no one has gone anywhere. They celebrated a World Series championship last fall, and they’ve won back to-back American League pennants. Yet no one from the front office, nor manager Ned Yost’s coaching staff, moved up the ladder for a better job elsewhere.
“Isn’t that great?” asks Royals general manager Dayton Moore when confronted with that fact. He adds, “Those guys will get their opportunities at some point in time. So much of it is timing and what owners want.”
But, why haven’t the Royals been raided by other teams?
Sports Illustrated baseball writer Tom Verducci says baseball executives don’t typically take a page from the NFL football playbook on their hiring practices.
“Baseball isn’t so much a copycat sport like the other sports when it comes to personnel for some reason,” says Verducci. “I remember when the Yankees were winning in the ‘90s and early 2000s. They pretty much held their staff together. There weren’t too many guys who were sought after to be managers at other places.”
The Yankees are the last team to win the World Series in successive years when they won it three years in a row from 1998 to 2000. Under manager Joe Torre at that time, the most notable coach to eventually move on and become a manager was Willie Randolph in 2005. He went across town to manage the Mets.
With two ex-managers, Dale Sveum and Don Wakamatsu, on Yost’s coaching staff, they’re qualified to manage again.
“It is a bit surprising when some of these openings come about and they’re not calling on these guys, but a little bit of me is glad, too,” says Yost. “I don’t know if that’s a good feeling to have, but I can’t imagine doing this with a different group of guys.”
So what do other owners want? And why haven’t they come after the Royals?
Verducci says he’s scratching his head over why baseball doesn’t follow football’s lead.
“You would think (with) winning cultures you’d want to pull people out of those cultures and tap into that,” says Verducci. “But I really value what the Royals are doing in terms of their stability.”
Take Sveum for example. As an ex-manager of the Chicago Cubs, he has the experience to try it again. But instead, Sveum has stabilized the hitting coach position with the Royals. Even Hall of Famer George Brett took a turn at coaching before deciding he didn’t want to re-live the grind of the in-season travel.
Sveum attributes the Royals’ on-field success to its off-the-field stability. The hitters, anyway, are more comfortable. “I think any time you have a consistent message and not a gimmicky message or sabermetric message, anything like that nowadays really makes players relax a lot more. That’s my philosophy anyway,” he says.
Just because those in Royals management are comfortable in their positions doesn’t mean they’re at least not pursuing other opportunities.
Rene Francisco, who’s is charge of the Royals international operations, interviewed for the general manager opening in Toronto during the off-season. J.J. Picollo, the Royals vice president of player personnel, has interviewed twice for general manager openings in Houston and Philadelphia.
Though still with the Royals, Piccolo says they’re not bitter about being turned down elsewhere. “We’re all very happy with what we’re doing and feel like we have a lot more to accomplish,” he says.
Greg Echlin is a sports reporter for KCUR 89.3.
