Making the case for Kansas City Royals skipper Matt Quatraro as manager of year
Through 127 games entering the weekend, the 2024 Royals are about the most startling and stirring story in baseball. With their 3-0 victory over the Angels on Wednesday night at Kauffman Stadium, they improved to 71-56 — a pace to win more than 90 games, one season after losing 106.
No team in baseball history has won more than 87 games (and that was just twice) after losing more than 100 the year before. Even more strikingly, this revival is in the aftermath of losing an average of 100 games (99.6, to be precise) over the last five full seasons.
Now, with a severe and surely revealing stretch ahead, starting with the Phillies on Friday night at Kauffman Stadium, this trajectory may or may not hold up.
But there are plenty of reasons to embrace the stretch run and for the Royals to keep saying “why not us?” — a term reliever Will Smith started proclaiming in spring training with a certain currency after having played for the last three World Series winning teams.
Some aspects of the turnaround are spectacularly obvious: the dawning of the age of Bobby Witt Jr.; the eternal flame of Sal Perez; a starting rotation transformed from exasperating liability to exhilarating asset; the emergence of RBI-machine Vinnie Pasquantino and the seemingly crucial acquisition of Lucas Erceg to shore up a volatile bullpen.
And then some for a team that on many given days has summoned key contributions from all over a clubhouse radically altered by general manager J.J. Picollo (and John Sherman’s expanded budget) in the offseason — and also deftly bolstered at the trade deadline.
Particularly if the Royals reach the postseason for the first time since 2015, but even if not, Picollo is a thoroughly deserving candidate for the MLB executive of the year award.
Far less conspicuously but also fundamental in this seismic shift has been the uncannily steadying and nuanced work of manager Matt Quatraro — who should be a favorite for the American League manager of the year honor that only once before was bestowed on a Royals manager: Tony Pena in 2003.
Never mind that the case for Picollo will be more overt and tangible than the one for Quatraro.
That’s the profile preferred by Quatraro, who is more a calming force than a burning one (even if he has been ejected five times in two seasons), as much a delegator as an instigator. And whose sway stems from a much-hyped data-driven approach, but also a human touch that knows chemistry and culture matter, too.
He’s so understated, though, as to be underappreciated.
Especially since he’s all about everyone else.
“I don’t think he wants any credit …” Picollo said recently. “But it’s hard not to notice what he’s doing.”
That extends well beyond the worthy but worn mantra (reminiscent of “Bull Durham” and “we’ve got to play them one day at a time”) that he professes: It’s all about “Today,” he’ll tell you, about every chance he get.
Well, almost every chance.
“I mean, it’s not like I’m (in the clubhouse) walking around going ‘Today, Today, Today,’” Quatraro said, laughing, as he sat in the Royals’ dugout after his pre-game news conference on Wednesday.
Heck, some days before games Quatraro even wears a Sarah’s Soldiers T-shirt, honoring the wonderful Sarah Nauser’s fight against ALS, as a change of pace to that “Today” one he favors.
(And, lest you wonder if he has a whole closetful of the same, he only has one … that goes around and around the laundry loop about as much as he loops back to it.)
But each of these todays is stacked on yesterdays, including the fiasco of last season, during which the first-year manager somehow almost always projected a certain serenity.
Almost eerily so, it sometimes seemed to me.
In fact, I occasionally wondered if it might do everyone some good — Quatraro, players and fans — to see him vent or rant or throw a chair or something after a game.
But … he didn’t.
And even if the roster has changed dramatically since then, it’s easy to now see a through-line from what that did for a young core grasping and gasping to one finding its way now.
“He easily could have gotten rattled” and behaved out of character, bench coach Paul Hoover said. “But he was steady Eddie. And because of that, I think he earned a lot of respect in that clubhouse.”
Hard as it was watching the team “getting our teeth kicked in” last season, pitching coach Brian Sweeney said, Quatraro demonstrated his ability to stare gloom in the eyes and stay resilient and process-driven while offering support ... not to mention input for what would be needed going forward.
That nurturing nature of his is apparent as a faithful friend to former teammates and coaches over the years. So many that Hoover marvels over Quatraro’s ongoing relationships.
But that trait also applies to staff and players who know he’s there to help push forward, first and foremost. They also know he’s there to listen and collaborate more than pontificate, and they enjoy his self-deprecating sense of humor.
All guided by a refreshing notion that being poised and true to yourself is a virtue, not an issue, no matter how others might do it.
From the outside looking in, anyway, maybe all that didn’t seem so inspiring last year as the staff and Picollo were getting to know each other and sort out what they had to work with.
But as infuriating as that so-called season of evaluation was, that time cultivated what we see now on a roster Picollo contoured more toward Quatraro’s emphasis on flexibility: a group whose connectivity is evident in the clubhouse and reflected in a team that depends on a number of role players who would prefer to be The Man.
Thanks to some shape-shifting work by Quatraro and staff.
While there are varying schools of thought on how many games managers directly win or lose, they also are responsible for a tone and attitude that are their own living, breathing part of any team.
“He’s the same guy every single day, and that’s super-important,” said Pasquantino, whose 95 RBIs rank third in the AL.
He added, “It allows us to know who we can be.”
Pitcher Brady Singer, who has gone from a 5.52 ERA last season to 3.18 entering the weekend series against the Phillies, pointed to Quatraro’s unflappable way (along with Sweeney’s tutelage) as encouraging faith ... even when there seemed little to believe in.
“He’s been a huge, huge part of this …” Singer said. “He’s kept us where we are. He’s kept us in today.”
Subtle as it might be, imparted through coaches he trusts to manage their own areas, in some ways it might seem an invisible hand.
Really, though, it’s a velvet touch — one that aligns and activates those in Quatraro’s sphere of influence. That’s much in the spirit and demeanor of an educator, as were both of his parents and his wife, Christine.
When I interviewed Quatraro in early 2023 shortly after he’d taken the job, we spoke about how his parents were “super steady” and “consistent” and provided “simple life lessons without telling you what to do or how to do it all the time.” Ever-present, really, without typically being intrusive.
He also shared something interesting for a supposedly numbers-consumed guy who in part got the job because of that: Much as he loved math growing up, that pretty well came to an end when a pre-calculus teacher told him, “If you don’t know this by now, you’re dead in the water.”
That was a month into the school year.
So his relationship with data is infused with something more and different, as he described the day he was introduced as manager. Data “doesn’t make the decisions,” he said then.
“It informs the decisions,” he said, “and it creates more questions that you can ask that help you make better decisions down the road.”
All of which makes Quatraro what Sweeney calls “a really cool thinker” — and an essential part of the Royals’ rise, no matter how intangible he wants that to seem.