Matheny is Royals’ new manager, but we won’t know who really has his ear until spring

Most baseball fans can name their favorite team’s star players and manager but can’t name their favorite team’s bullpen coach.

Most of us don’t pay much attention to a team’s coaching staff, but those coaches have more to do with a team’s success or failure than many of us realize.

The Royals recently announced their coaching staff for next season. With spring training not all that far away now, here are a few things to know about these guys.

Too much blame ... and credit

A manager appears to be the guy in charge, right? He stands with one foot on the top step of the dugout and stares thoughtfully at the action on the field while everybody else waits for the big guy to make a decision.

Maybe, maybe not.

Every team is different, but field managers are increasingly viewed as subordinate to teams’ analytics departments; some managers just carry out the numbers guys’ game plan. Those managers are considered middle management at best.

And modern-day managers have a lot on their plate besides deciding whether it’s time for a safety squeeze.

Today’s managers are expected to deal with the media, be a salesman and spokesman for the team and act as a front office-clubhouse go-between — lots of responsibilities that don’t involve managing actual ballgames.

So when it’s time to make a game decision, don’t be surprised if the manager consults one of his coaches first. Coaches are the guys who have actually been working with the players while the manager is conducting his pre-game news conference.

And before a post-game news conference, some managers go to their coaches and ask what they should say.

In the past, the Royals allowed their coaches and players a great deal of freedom to make their own in-game decisions. As a result, recently retired KC manager Ned Yost sometimes got credit — or blame — for decisions he didn’t actually make.

The coaches are more important than we think.

Information overload?

Big-league ballplayers have access to more information than ever, and to most of us that sounds like a good thing. But the amount of information they’re asked to process can be overwhelming.

As returning Royals coach Rusty Kuntz once said: “Information overload can happen in a heartbeat.”

Too much information can cause confusion, and a confused player lacks aggression. The ball’s rolled past him as he’s still mentally sorting through the possibilities.

A modern coach’s job includes sifting through a mountain of data and telling players what they need to know about the game that night. Good coaches show up early and put in long hours most of us never see.

Say a hitter pulls the ball 70 percent of the time; does he still pull the ball 70 percent of the time when the pitcher throws 98 mph? Does he pull the ball 70 percent of the time with two strikes in the count? With a runner in scoring position? With a lefty on the mound?

The coach has to take all that information and blend it with what he sees during that night’s game. Maybe that pull hitter has a slow bat that night, or the pitcher has a little something extra on his fastball. That can, or should, change the fielders’ positioning. We see a routine ground ball to second base and have no idea how much work went into making that happen.

When former Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer stole a base in Game 5 of the 2015 World Series against the New York Mets and pointed back at Kuntz in the first base coach’s box, he was acknowledging the work Kuntz had done to make that stolen base possible.

Vague job titles

Baseball has a tradition of hiring guys for jobs with vague job titles. That way those guys can do whatever the team needs them to do, even if it’s just waiting around for some other guy to get fired.

If a team decides to fire its manager during the season, it simplifies things if that club already has a manager in-waiting in the wings — someone club officials have already considered and vetted.

They’ll go through a job search just in case anything new pops up, but unless the manager in-waiting robbed a convenience store on his day off, teams often already know who’s getting the job. The job search is eye wash.

Yost had one of those vague front-office jobs with the Royals when Trey Hillman was fired. And there were people who figured they knew who Yost’s successor would be as soon as Mike Matheny was hired as “Special Advisor for Player Development” (which sounds better than “Dude Who is Waiting for Ned to Leave”).

When the Royals announced Matheny’s coaching staff recently, a couple guys had vague job titles. Let’s take a look at what those job titles might mean.

Rafael Belliard is a special assignment coach ... which can mean just about anything. Belliard was said to be replacing Kuntz, but those two guys have different areas of expertise. Belliard was a middle infielder during his playing career, and his full title on the Royals website is listed as “Special Assistant to the General Manager/Infield Coordinator.”

John Mabry is the club’s new major-league coach, which is about as vague as it gets and means anything the Royals want it to mean. But Mabry’s hire might make hitting coach Terry Bradshaw nervous.

Mabry, Matheny and pitching coach Cal Eldred worked together on the St. Louis Cardinals’ pre- and post-game shows, and when Matheny became the Cardinals’ manager, Mabry was named assistant hitting coach to Mark McGwire. When McGwire left for a job with the Dodgers, Mabry became the Cards’ hitting coach and kept that job until Matheny was fired.

Now Mabry shows up in Kansas City.

This year, the Royals ranked near the bottom of the league in a lot of offensive categories, and that doesn’t help Bradshaw’s case. When a team struggles it’s a common PR tactic to pick a coach and throw him to the wolves. Firing a coach is often used as a distraction, giving everyone else time to right the ship and save their own jobs.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but if the Royals decide someone’s got to go in 2020, they’ve provided themselves with an alternative hitting coach.

Watch the dugout

Job titles are one thing, reality another.

In the past, watching the Royals’ dugout revealed that Yost and bench coach Don Wakamatsu rarely conferred. Maybe we should have asked how a major-league coach had enough time on his hands to write fancy calligraphy onto lineup cards.

During games, Yost spent most of his time talking to Pedro Grifol, so it’s no surprise that Grifol now officially has the job he was doing unofficially in the past.

Vance Wilson is replacing Mike Jirschle at third base, but Jirschle also served as the Royals’ infield coach. Wilson’s been working with the pitchers, so somebody has to handle the infield. This summer, watch the Royals’ dugout.

Kuntz will no doubt be stationed by the dugout opening nearest the outfield; it doesn’t matter what his job title says, the coach standing at the dugout opening nearest home plate will be positioning the infield.

Watch Matheny and who he talks to. No matter what the titles say, the coach who’s in his ear all the time is the actual bench coach. It should be Grifol, but we won’t know for sure until we see it.

We know what the Royals have announced, but we still don’t know how those coaching roles will really play out.

This story was originally published December 12, 2019 at 5:00 AM.