Have The Royals Really Been “Yost'ed”?

(Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

By Stevo-sama | @yoshiki89

It’s always hard to evaluate the ways and means by which a losing team continues to lose, and no evaluation seems to hurt the greater majority the most than those that involve the 2012 Kansas City Royals.

This is primarily part of an unfair media backlash as a result of their stunning rankings in the developmental realm during the 2011 season. They famously had the best farm system in baseball throughout 2011 and generated the kind of hype and buzz that many of us have never seen. It’s hard for even the most complacent fan to not embrace the excellent culture that so many read volumes about last year; it’s even more difficult for loyal Royals fans to accept the differential between the swell of last year’s blazing hope and the smoldering reality that the Royals are going to do no better than even the most hopeful pre-season projections…and quite possibly, even worse than that.

To be fair, any expectation that the Royals would win as many as 80 games in 2012 was one that resided behind the most rose-colored of baseball glasses. The lack of what many consider to be serious transactions during the off-season (primarily in starting pitching) was the opening knell what would eventually transpire for the rest of the season.
Injuries were another factor in obfuscating a promising 2012 outlook for the team, but this is an issue most teams in both leagues have been suffering under since Spring Training. One also has to consider the fact that injuries of key players don’t really send more than a signal on the surface about what will happen for the remainder of the season, so the Royals’ injuries early on don’t really validate their performance. If you disagree with this, you may want to consider the impact of Adam Wainwright’s season-ending surgery in early 2011 and how that made little or no difference to the World Series winning St. Louis Cardinals. You may also want to call a Reds fan and ask them if Ryan Madson has been sorely missed this season, if at all.

The focus of attention has been cast recently to Royals manager Ned Yost. He who was once as likable and as lovable as Ron Gardenhire, to an extent, where his tenuous career and sudden removal as the Brewers’ manager (with only 12 games to go and a postseason berth within his grasp) in 2008 were not suspect at all when evaluating when (not if) the Royals would have their first winning season in several years. This season, the tide hasn’t really turned. It has become stifled…the Royals really aren’t doing any better. The early (and costly) call-up of Eric Hosmer in 2011 failed to help the Royals win, and the house of cards seems to be crumbling as the 2012 season drags on for win-hungry Kansas City fans.

In a sudden change from last year, Yost’s defenders have turned on him with a myriad of armchair GM issues. There seems to be no defense anyone who supports him can offer, and he’s losing support from fans and the media exponentially. Evaluating the effectiveness of a manager on team performance is about as nefarious as evaluating defense using the most prolific metrics supported by a mass of extravagant data. Managers come, managers go, and the only common thread that seems to link their work with the performance of the team they operate is the one parameter that is the glue of baseball, the one factor that can’t be measured…and that is luck.

This isn’t meant as a study on defending or admonishing his career with the Royals. The question is being asked: Is Ned Yost part of the problem, or isn’t he? The answer is elusive, but what can be reviewed is the team’s W-L record under his watch. Using Bill James’ Pythagorean expectation (as well as some information used in this calculation); let’s attempt to isolate what can be measured from the greatest part of the luck itself.

Let’s start by comparing Yost’s career with the Royals up to the morning of Monday, August 27th to that of his predecessor, the erstwhile strategist-at-large Trey Hillman, who was all but run out of town on a rail when his tenure with the Royals abruptly ended in mid-season.

Hillman’s cumulative WPCT (percentage from Win-Loss) was .402 over 359 games, his PPCT (Pythagorean Win-Loss percentage) was .403, with an average Run Differential of -98.7. Run Differential is derived from Runs Scored-Runs Allowed, a negative number isn’t great, and a positive number is great. This is basic. The point is clear; the Royals were certainly a sub-.500 team under Hillman, case closed. Yost, by comparison is faring better in WPCT as .439 over 415 games. A slightly larger sample but close enough to see the difference. The Royals’ Pythagorean expectation under Yost is greater than actual at .456. This reveals a fact that’s easy for just about anyone to swallow…the Royals should be doing a little better, but they are still a sub-.500 team. The difference is the Run Differential. The Royals under Ned Yost are -67, an indicator that the gap between Runs Scored and Runs Allowed is smaller than it was with Hillman, so this can surely be interpreted as an improvement, above and beyond the similarity in actual W-L percentage.

It’s a very tunnel-vision approach to validate that Yost is doing somewhat better with the Royals than Hillman did. With the Pythagorean expectation and Run Differential, we’ve done the best we can to focus more on overall team performance and less on just W-L, but we’re no closer to assessing Ned Yost’s success as the Royals manager than we were when we started. Let’s compare transitional management of a similar team and see how the same data is justifying someone else’s employment…or not. Is there another team in the American League that has had a winning season drought as long as Kansas City? Has that team fared better or worse with its subsequent change in management, and could that data support or deny the claim that Ned Yost is a victim of small sample size? There is one team that has had a longer drought, by 7 years, and has experienced controversial management transition in the same time frame as the Royals…the Baltimore Orioles.

Keep in mind, the Orioles are in what is well-known to be a tougher division than the Royals. We’ll start with Dave Trembley’s tenure with the Orioles and review the differences, using the same metrics used to compare Hillman and Yost, between that and Buck Showalter’s current run with the Orioles as of the morning of 8/27/12. Juan Samuel’s interim 51 games is included for the fact that he did operate as the manager in between Trembley and Showalter, but his data won’t be included in the analysis.

Trembley managed 470 games with the Orioles, the team had a WPCT of .381 during that time and a PPCT of .402. Here, we again see that the Orioles should have been doing better but only by a few percentage points (similar to Yost) and with an average Run Differential of -103, similar to Hillman’s gap. With Showalter in the picture, the Orioles are a cumulatively better team by WPCT (.523). Yet, a lower PPCT of .479 suggests they are faring better than expected during that time frame. During Showalter’s watch, year over year, the WPCT has been greater than PPCT, but none greater than in 2012 with a 17.5% difference…the Orioles should be a sub-.500 team, and they are anything but that right now. The key is their low Run Differential, an average of -58.7 in 345 games total from 2010-2012 current, and a -46 value for the 2012 season so far. The team was gangbusters on Run Differential during the final third of the 2010 season when Showalter took over, 2011 showed a deficit of 152, the -46 Run Differential in the 2012 season so far is the best in 5 seasons, and in a more difficult division.

Comparing the Royals with Yost against the Orioles with Showalter almost looks like a wash; the values of 50 and 46 on the same side of zero and the identical Pythagorean expectation have them locked in at very similar values. The argument can be made, based on this analysis, that Showalter is doing potentially every bit as good with the Orioles as Yost is with the Royals. The difference is their actual win percentage, which is indeed reality. The Orioles are competing with a negative Run Differential in a very aggressive division, while the Royals are dangerously floundering in a less competitive division.

We’ve tried to isolate the performance from some of the luck using Pythagorean expectation and Runs Allowed/Runs Scored, but at the heart of the matter is winning, something Baltimore is doing and Kansas City is not doing. Luck has less to do with the fact that leadership that is lacking tends to result in teams that don’t win. You can stack up the numbers any way you like, but what’s evident in either case is consistency, both the numbers and the record show that Yost is consistent at managing a sub-.500 team, and this is ultimately the pill that Royals fans must swallow.

 

Otherwise known as "The Baseball Enthusiast," Stevo-sama is a scorekeeping addict who scores every game he watches and/or attends, and typically posts these scoresheets on his blog with a game story of one sort or another. Stevo is a self-proclaimed proponent of the Scorekeeping Revolution, community member of the Eephus League, and proud member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance.