Hey, they said it.
“What are you asking me to do? Take my belt off and spank them? Yell at them? Scream at them? What do you want?”
— Ned Yost, May 28, after being asked how Kansas City Royals were holding struggling players accountable during an 18 loss-in-22 game stretch.
“You know how people panic?” he asked. “We’re not going to panic. We’re not panicking. We are not panicking. I’m not going to make excuses for young players. I’m just not. I’ve seen a lot of them come up and do well. But we do have a lot of them in the lineup … We’ll be all right.”
–Royals General Manager Dayton Moore, May 22. Royals are 16th in hits but 21st in errors, 22nd in RBIs, 23rd in runs scored, 26th in team slugging and 28th in walks received.
“When you are trying to build a team,” he says, “you have to strike a balance between what’s good for the team NOW and what’s good for the team in the FUTURE. Every GM has to take those things into consideration. Well, we’re done with that balance. We’re trying to win now. Everything we do from here on in will be to win now. I mean, we are obviously going to try and be smart about it. But, as you know, the Royals have not won for a long time. And, as you know, Major League Baseball players have a small window of opportunity. Our young nucleus of players, we have them under control for the next three to seven years. We have to give them a chance to win every one of those years.”
–Moore, December 2012, after trading Wil Myers, Jake Odirizzi and others for Rays pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis. Royals sit 21-28 despite a 3.79 team ERA.
“I want to start pulling the ball a little bit more. I don’t care about … I don’t want a ton of strikeouts, but I would rather strike out than hit the ball deep to the right-center field wall and have it caught — unless there’s a man on third base. Or a man on second base.”
— Yost, December 2012. Royals as a team through May 29 have 28 home runs, one more than last-place Miami.
“There is just no reward here (for us) to try and hit home runs,” Maloof said. “We try to stay down on the ball, be more line-drive oriented, and do more situational hitting at least through the first two or three rounds (at home) here. That’s why I’m not overly concerned because I think we’ll lead the league in fewest home runs again this year. We don’t have a 40-homer guy in the middle of the lineup…Other teams come in here from Anaheim or wherever and they have their swing already down. This park doesn’t even enter into their minds when they hit here. They have their swings, the same swings, because it pays dividends for them at home.”
–Royals hitting coach Jack Maloof. Cubs pitchers have more home runs than Royals hitters in May.
“I know what the fans want. They want it, and they want it now. Instant gratification just doesn’t work (in baseball).”
–Yost, May 18. Royals have one winning season since the mid-1990s.
Free Samples of a Sleep-Deprived Brain 