Royals manager Ned Yost announces retirement effective at the end of the 2019 season

Make no mistake, the 2019 Kansas City Royals are not a good baseball team. The team currently sits with a 57-100 record and the organization seems to be firmly entrenched in a total rebuild along with a change in ownership being imminent. It is possible these were factors in today’s news.

Manager Ned Yost is beloved in Kansas City. He led the team to two World Series appearances (2014, 2015) including the team’s first World Series Championship since 1985. Aside from being the longest tenured manager in the franchise’s history (guys typically didn’t stick around for long there), Yost is also the team’s winningest manager with 744 wins. However, with the Royals set to be rebuilding for the foreseeable future (see above), it appears that Yost decided that this was a good time to call it a career.

While Yost has certainly earned a fair bit of ire for his near complete and total rejection of advanced metrics, his accomplishments speak volumes. At 65 years old, retirement was likely always going to be on the table and, as Yost notes in his statement, it appears that his plan all along was to leave once the rebuild was set to begin its upswing.

Regardless of the reasoning, Royals fans now have a lot to take in this offseason as it appears that not only will they be looking at a new ownership group, but a new manager for the 2020 season as well.