Ned Yost, the manager of the World Champion Kansas City Royals (as a native New Yorker, it’s disappointing to have to type the words “World Champion” to describe the Royals), sounds like he’s a great teacher.
The New York Times has just published a nice profile headlined How Ned Yost Made the Kansas City Royals Unstoppable: The most criticized manager in the major leagues dismissed metrics and embraced failure — and broke his team’s three-decade slump.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
Agreed Yost sees the players as much more than a set of stats. But you’d be sadly mistaken if you don’t think Yost relies and depends
On staff of 6-7 saber metric PHDs in statistics to guide his thinking. Just heard them talk last summer about how the data grinding tells them who to keep and who to let go to free agency.
He probably is most like a teacher in how he knows all of this and still looks for the unquantifiable and character. A real data informed teacher.