Royals’ Mike Matheny optimistic about club’s ability to challenge for AL Central crown
Mike Matheny managed a fourth-place team with a sub-.500 record this season in the Kansas City Royals. The standings don’t waver on that. However, Matheny simply won’t be convinced that his ballclub wasn’t competitive.
Matheny certainly doesn’t view himself as some version of a glorified farm director at the big-league level. He didn’t take his post with intentions of overseeing player development on the game’s largest stage while losses pile up in hopes of wins in years to come.
“Winning is always the goal,” Matheny said. “We try to keep it simple. It’s cliche, but it’s true. We just go out and expect to win every single game. We’re not walking out there expecting to lose. It starts with the mindset.”
Matheny spoke to reporters via video conference on Thursday morning in a virtual Winter Meetings media session.
He echoed sentiments recently voiced by general manager Dayton Moore that the Royals aim to compete in the American League Central Division in 2021.
In light of the free-agent signings of veteran former All-Stars first baseman Carlos Santana and pitcher Mike Minor, Moore stressed the importance of setting a tone “that we expect to win” in comments last week.
Moore went on to characterized the front office as having going through “tough negotiations” prior to the non-tender deadline because they needed to “scratch and claw for every penny.” Moore’s implication being that they were motivated to free up the necessary money in order to make crucial roster additions to compete this season.
“You look at the Chicago White Sox and the talent they have on the field, and I guess a lot of people would say, ‘Why are you trying to compete against them?’ Well, it’s because it’s the major leagues, and it’s our job,” Moore said. “It’s our job to go out and try to be better than the Chicago White Sox along with everybody else.”
The Royals finished this year’s 60-game slate with a 26-34 record, while the Minnesota Twins (36-24), White Sox (35-25) and Cleveland Indians (35-25) finished within a game of each other in the AL Central.
The Royals split their season series against the Twins and Indians, but went 1-9 against the White Sox including five losses within three runs and two walk-off losses.
Matheny called the idea of competing in the division “realistic,” and he felt his team was often just missing “one little piece” on a daily basis.
“Part of those pieces, I believe, happened internally in the way guys — especially young players — develop in their career path,” Matheny said. “The other part of that is making some of these additions. We were tracking well, I thought very well, at the end of the season.”
Matheny’s observations weren’t exclusively the result of a front office/managerial group think.
Veteran relief pitcher Greg Holland, who re-signed with the club earlier in the week, discussed a “process” that he went through alongside the core of the Royals’ World Series championship team in 2015 with players like Salvador Perez, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain and Kelvin Herrera among others.
He pointed to something similar having taken place this season.
“When you have a lot of young guys on the team, you’re excited you’re in the big leagues,” Holland said. “You want to keep your job.
“Then it turns to a point like, ‘I’m tired of losing. We’re better than these guys. We’re going to win.’ When you see the Hosmers and Mooses, Cains, Kelvin, all those young guys that I came up with, we made that transition. I feel like this team has as well.”
Perez made similar comments late in the season, comparing the feeling of the 2020 team to that of 2013.
The Royals were six games under .500 at the All-Star break but finished 86-76 in 2013. They made back-to-back World Series appearances in 2014 and 2015, winning the 2015 championship.
This season, the Royals went 12-13 in their last 25 games, tied for the best record in the AL in the final 18 games (12-6), and they won five of their last seven.
Seven players (six pitchers) made their MLB debuts for the Royals in 2020, including starting pitchers Brady Singer and Kris Bubic.
Returning players such as second baseman Nicky Lopez, outfielders Franchy Cordero, Edward Olivares, Bubba Starling and first baseman/outfielder Ryan McBroom still don’t have one full-length MLB season under their belts.
“It’s hard to get better when you’re playing against the very best in the game, and we watched players do that,” Matheny said. “Whether or not statistics would even support it, we watched them start to do things they hadn’t done before.
“That was probably the main conversation we had walking into spring of 2020 — how can we change that mindset and get guys to start believing. You have to have the results to truly get that buy-in. Some of those results were there, regardless of record.”
This story was originally published December 17, 2020 at 2:18 PM.
