Remember the film Moneyball? In the movie, manager Art Howe presses Billy Beane for a contract extension, arguing he can’t manage on a one-year deal.
“And a 1-year contract says the same thing to a manager as it does to a player: There’s not a lot of faith there.”
It turns out that part of the movie wasn’t true, but the sentiment that a manager in the last year of his contract is a “lame duck” is widely accepted around baseball.
So the Royals avoided that situation today by exercising the club option on manager Mike Matheny for the 2023 season.