KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A few weeks before I started at The Kansas City Star in June 2013, I was getting acclimated to the Kansas City sports scene when I read of Royals manager Ned Yost’s rant in Oakland about the struggles of young Mike Moustakas.
Asked by The Star’s Bob Dutton if he planned to stick with Moustakas, who was hitting .189 at the time, Yost responded thusly:
“You know what? Maybe when we get home I can go to the third base tree and pick another third baseman. … Obviously, third basemen who can hit and hit with power, they must grow on trees. They’ve got to. Like relief pitchers. And starting pitchers. Right fielders. Left fielders. First basemen. All of these guys must grow on trees, and you must be able to just go get another good one. A ripe one. Make sure it’s ripe.
“Those trees are at a hidden location but, obviously, they’re somewhere. Because that’s what everyone wants to do. Let’s just go pluck another one out of the tree. That’s the nonsense that really ticks me off.”
At the time, I remember thinking it was hilarious. But I also hadn’t understood how polarizing a figure Yost had become and was struck by how much he was mocked for saying it. But that was no wonder, really, since Kansas City hadn’t experienced so much as a postseason appearance to cheer since 1985 and many were losing patience with Yost into his fourth season on the job.
Ten years later, Yost on Thursday was named to the Royals Hall of Fame as just its 27th overall member — and the first figure from those two magical, exhilarating years that few places could cherish more because of the endless drought that preceded it.
And as he spoke on a Zoom call with the media Thursday afternoon, it occurred to me that those words in 2013 essentially epitomized Yost: ever defiant, as witty as cantankerous, dead-set in his convictions and quite happy to be a lightning rod for criticism if it alleviated pressure on the players.
Which is to say Yost, the winningest manager in club history, was the right person in the right place at the right time to help convert potential into reality for a slew of young players he believed had to morph through failure to learn how to win.
Now, if eligible yet, others from those enchanted seasons, including several players and general manager Dayton Moore, likely would have entered before Yost — who retired after the 2019 season.
No one understands that better than Yost, who during the 30-plus minute call repeatedly spoke of how he reaped the benefits of hard work everywhere behind the scenes set in place by Moore.
“Everything that happened was because of Dayton,” said Yost, speaking from Jackson, Miss. “He put all the pieces in place.”
But there is also something apt about Yost being the first from that time.
Because for a franchise few believed in before it went supernova, he embodied the collective underestimation.
Yost was often criticized for his decisions, including the well-deserved blowback for the wacky one to insert Yordano Ventura in relief in the 2014 wild-card game that may have led to his demise if not for an utterly spine-tingling rally.
That and a tendency toward hunches and gut feelings was such a part of his brand that entering the 2014 American League Championship Series The Wall Street Journal portrayed the matchup with the Orioles and manager Buck Showalter as “The Dunce” vs. the “Chessmaster.”
The Royals, of course, swatted the chess pieces off the board by sweeping the Orioles and taking the Giants to Game 7 of the World Series before winning it all a year later.
It’s entirely true, though, that Yost’s success at the helm was less about shrewd strategy than his humanity. That remains a fine reminder that despite the rise of analytics, the manager’s job is about much more than data processing.
It’s about coaxing out the best in players and making a team better than the sum of its parts, which Yost also helped achieve by humbling himself enough to learn to delegate and loosen up.
His only regret, he said, was not pushing harder when he sensed complacency in the 2016 team that finished 81-81.
It’s somewhat poetic, and perhaps instructive as the Royals hope to return to contention with a new wave of promising players, that Yost in some ways is being recognized now because of some of the things for which he was so criticized: letting young players take their lumps even when they were overmatched in the moment to help them mature.
“You guys never understood what I was trying to accomplish,” he said Thursday. “And you all looked at me like I was stupid.”
For that matter, Yost added, even some veteran players were cynical about the positive future he was trying to project. According to Yost, pitcher Zack Greinke said, “ ‘I don’t believe it. I’ve heard it too many times.’ ”
But Greinke (now back with the Royals) effectively became part of the movement when he asked for a trade. That led to the Royals acquiring Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain from the Brewers in December 2010.
They were among seven vital players who made their Royals debut in 2011, including Moustakas, Kelvin Herrera, Danny Duffy, Eric Hosmer and Sal Perez as part of what Moore would call “Operation: Flip The Switch” – a transition from preparing for the future to engaging it.
The progress wasn’t individually linear, and at first it was only incremental progress collectively. But along the lines of what Yost suggested Thursday, that it typically takes 2.5 years for talented players to find themselves at the big league level, the Royals won more games each season from 2010 through 2015: 67 ... 71 ... 72 ... 86 ... 89 ... 95.
And Yost will tell you there was one particular key to that.
“Patience. More than anything else,” he said. “I gave them the opportunity to grow.”
By way of example, he pointed to Moustakas, who continued to struggle and was sent to Class AAA Omaha for a stint in 2014. But even in the moment, Yost hugged Moustakas and reassured him he’d be back soon — a point to which Moustakas alluded at the 2015 All-Star Game that amplified his breakout 2014 postseason with five home runs.
Which brings us to the less-remembered part of what Yost said about Moustakas, and the broader matter, that 2013 day in Oakland.
“The kid is going to be fine,” he said. “Yes, he’s fighting it right now. They’re all fighting it. They want success. They want to bring a championship to Kansas City. At times, the desire to win overwhelms them.
“I’ve been in baseball my whole life. I know which kids are going to work and which kids aren’t. He’s going to work. I’ve seen it too many times. (Being patient) with young guys works. It works.”
He later added, “There are just too many smart baseball people who see what I see. So with Hos, with Moose, Salvy and (Alcides) Escobar, ... all of these kids, they’re going to be fine. They’re going to be very productive players.
“But if you think they’re going to be productive from the moment they get here just because they had great minor-league careers … no. There are huge lessons and journeys to endure at the major league level. There is no third baseman tree. You don’t go grab another one. You let him develop.”
Not everyone does develop, of course.
But those Royals certainly did into a group that Yost — and Kansas City — will always treasure. And his entry into the Hall of Fame punctuates that journey in a very real way, underscoring the process it took to make that happen.
