When the Royals hired Mike Matheny to be their new manager last winter, some fans were more than a bit skeptical. Despite winning a pennant in St. Louis and enjoying winning records in each of his six full seasons with the Cardinals, Matheny had a fair number of criticisms of his strategies and was fired midway through the 2018 season amid allegations he had condoned hazing of a rookie player and had a tense clubhouse with icy relationships with key players. He was far from a progressive manager in St. Louis, using rigid conventional bullpen roles, relying on small sample sizes to inform his lineups, and ranking last among active managers in Baseball Prospectus’ Reliever Management metric.
Mike Matheny might be the analytics-minded manager we’ve been waiting for
