The Royals find a fit with Matt Quatraro

Collaboration (and excitement) is in the air as a new era dawns for the Royals.

Matt Quatraro has been a serious managerial candidate for several recent openings but has yet to get the ultimate opportunity. With the Royals, his wait is over. The new manager met the media on Thursday morning at Kauffman Stadium.

“What a tremendous honor, just to be named manager of the Royals. It is a culmination of a process, but it’s also just the beginning of our partnership together and what we expect to be great things going forward.

“As excited as I am to be named the manager, I’m even more excited to jump into the process. You guys will learn that about me, I’m extremely process oriented. I think the process we all envision here is building a championship environment that is going to bring the Royals back to the top tier of baseball and be that way year after year.

I mentioned the commitment, the support, the forward-thinking that I’m confident is here will undoubtedly serve us well putting perennial contenders on the field.”

It may read a bit boilerplate from a new manager, but I’m going to go ahead and buy in to what he has to say. His opening statement certainly hit the right notes. He’s not just about building a team that challenges for a championship, he’s looking for his club to be consistently in the mix. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Quatraro is a low-key kind of guy which is probably what the clubhouse needs after the uber-intense Mike Matheny occupied the manager’s office for three seasons. As I was listening to Quatraro on Thursday I was struck by just how centered he seemed. So even-keeled. You can see how he would be thought of as a strong communicator with his players.

Managerial hires are often reactionary. They’re the result of a previous failure so a correction is sought. We see it in both the teams competing in the World Series. Dusty Baker was brought to Houston to restore faith and respectability in a disgraced franchise. Rob Thomson was promoted to provide a steady hand after the intensity of Joe Girardi failed to resonate with the Phillies.

I think the Royals are following the Phillies’ blueprint here.

Quatraro continued with more praise for the organization.

“Beyond the obvious things, the baseball part of it, the focus that was here on the people in the organization, not just in this group but years prior, it really bursts through when you talk to people. There’s a lot of loyalty. A lot of people have great experiences with how the organization has helped their families and the community and I’m excited to be part of that.”

I’m going to pull this quote because I think it’s a perfect description of Dayton Moore’s legacy in Kansas City. He was here for so long that it sometimes gets lost that when he arrived in 2006, the organization was the absolute pits. I’m not just talking about the baseball which was dreadful. The whole organization was rotten. What Moore did to get the Glass Family to open their wallets and then even more importantly, get the hell out of the way, was fundamental in rejuvenating this franchise. Moore’s processes may have failed to build a consistent winner, but the organization is what is good about baseball. The culture is strong. It’s something fans can—and should—be proud of. Quatraro noticed that, not because he’s tuned into what’s happening in Kansas City, but because it’s known throughout the industry. The Kansas City Royals treat their people right.

That’s Dayton Moore’s legacy.

General Manager J.J. Picollo called the Royals’ managerial search “quick and efficient.” A bit of a pivot from his comments a few weeks ago where he stressed patience. The feedback I received from many readers at the time was one of concern that the team would dither, wait too long, and would miss out on quality candidates. While Moore’s legacy is one of a first-class organization, the scars of the failures run deep. I think it’s safe to say that Picollo is his own general manager. That’s a good thing.

Picollo expanded a bit on the process the Royals undertook in their search. The baseball operations department identified the qualities of what they should be looking for in a manager and helped set the parameters of what would be discussed in the interview process. They had a six-person panel that participated in the interviews and subsequent debriefs.

The Royals and Picollo identified the type of experience they were looking for ranging from candidates with previous major league managerial experience to those with minor league managerial stops to bench coaches. He also noted they identified a personality and leadership type that would mesh with the current group of players. And he mentioned looking for someone open to collaboration. Collaboration. We’ve heard that a ton over the last four weeks.

They ultimately interviewed seven candidates. Three were in-house. One was introduced as the new manager of the Chicago White Sox on Thursday.

Collaboration means interfacing with all departments in the organization. You could get the impression in listening to Picollo these last couple of weeks that collaboration was something that was missing from the previous occupant of the manager’s office. You could also infer from comments that, despite the insistence that he was ready to embrace the data, Matheny wasn’t exactly accepting of the analytics.

The relationship between the analytic staff and the field staff is going to change. Quatraro, with his experience in Tampa and Cleveland, isn’t a stranger to data.

“Most teams have the same amount of data. It’s a matter of opening the means of communication between field staff, front office, R & D, strength and conditioning…everybody. And that’s what I plan to do and that’s what our staff will do.”

It’s so simple—just 44 words—but Quatraro effectively distilled the difference between organizations that are and aren’t successful in utilizing data. There is a ton of data available to teams. Most probably have the exact same set of data. The difference—and this is key—is how they communicate that data into a plan.

This is where it seems as though the Royals have suffered through the years. They have a strong analytics department. Yet it just seemed as if the data wasn’t getting distilled in a way that the team could use. For example, sometimes they would shift more than just about every team in the league. Then, they would hardly shift at all comparatively. The data told them what they should do, but they couldn’t translate that data into any kind of coherent, or consistent, plan. It also probably didn’t help that the last to occupants of the manager’s office wasn’t super receptive of that information.

That’s not going to happen on Quatraro’s watch. By keeping the lines of communication open between the analytics department, the sports scientists and the front office with the field staff, they should be able to formulate a plan and make adjustments as additional data is collected. Picollo expanded on this.

“From our perspective, we just needed somebody that had a great acceptance of the information and an ability to utilize it and put it in play. It’s one thing to have it and look at it, now you need to know what to do with it.”

(Again, I can’t help myself but I read statements like that and think it’s a comment on the last manager. For all that we heard about Matheny embracing the analytics, did he really? It would appear the answer to that question is a resounding no.)

The willing acceptance of the data doesn’t mean that Quatraro is beholden to it.

“The way I look at it is all of that information, all of the input are kind of the guardrails. And within those guardrails, there is room for interpretation. The better we feel about our process and information, the closer those guardrails get together. This game is played by human beings and there’s a lot of emotion…

“More than anything it’s just being willing to accept a different way to look at things. There’s a tremendous amount of randomness in the game of baseball. To think that you can control everything by a decision I make…sometimes you just have to let go of the fact that you have the ultimate control over what happens. That acceptance leads itself to the data. To my mind the data doesn’t make the decisions, it informs the decisions and it creates more questions you can ask that help you make better decisions down the road.”

I think this is the essence of today’s baseball. The data doesn’t make the decisions. The data informs the decisions. The most successful teams have found a comfortable nexus between data and instinct. There’s nothing wrong with going with your gut. But wouldn’t you feel better if your gut was filled with some relevant data that helped guide you?

This is exactly why I was hoping that Quatraro would be the choice. From everything I heard about him once the managerial position opened, he backed up with his comments on Thursday in his introductory press conference. He’s not beholden to the analytics, but he will incorporate them into his process. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Picollo expanded on what he termed Quatraro’s “intellectual curiosity.”

“Something that stood out to our committee, Matt had a great understanding of where the game has been, where it is today and where it’s going, which is hard to predict, but it’s that growth mindset and intellectual curiosity that’s going to put us in a better position moving forward, so that really stood out.”

As far as a managerial philosophy, Quatraro maintained he would be elastic, adapting to the players and their strengths. He did stress the need for depth and said he would regularly utilize all 26 players on the active roster. I gave him bonus points for name-checking Earl Weaver.

One other thing that’s quite intangible, but I just can’t get over the tone of this press conference. It’s a more relaxed vibe coming from the dais, maybe a little less uptight, IBM corporate baseball. No talk of iron sharpening iron, rather just relating ideas and philosophies about the game and how Quatraro plans to connect, collaborate and communicate. Maybe a little less drill sergeant and a little more of a listener.

Hell, it’s possible that covering this franchise for the last 16 years with Moore in charge has worn me down, so maybe I’m reading too much into this. Except I don’t think so. There’s a welcome breath of fresh air at One Royal Way.

Opening Day can’t get here fast enough. Let the Q Era begin.