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Kansas City Royals, manager Ned Yost extend deal by 1 year

By Phil Watson

Oct 22, 2014; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost before game two of the 2014 World Series against the San Francisco Giants at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 22, 2014; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost before game two of the 2014 World Series against the San Francisco Giants at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Kansas City Royals rode a wild-card wave in October all the way to Game 7 of the World Series, earning manager Ned Yost a one-year extension.

The Kansas City Royals announced Tuesday that the club and manager Ned Yost have agreed to a one-year contract extension.

Yost’s deal now runs through the 2016 season.

The 60-year-old Yost was named manager of the Royals in May 2010, replacing Trey Hillman, and has a 373-402 record in parts of five seasons.

But the Royals were 86-76 in 2013 as their young core of players began to come of age and followed that up with an 89-73 wild-card campaign in 2014.

Kansas City scored an electrifying extra-innings win over the Oakland Athletics, coming back a 7-3 deficit in the Wild Card Game, and rode that wave to sweeps of the Los Angeles Angels and Baltimore Orioles to earn the franchise’s first World Series berth since 1985.

The Royals pushed the San Francisco Giants to seven games in the Fall Classic before they went down 3-2 in Game 7 behind an iconic relief performance from Giants left-hander Madison Bumgarner.

For Yost, it was his first postseason experience as a manager. He came close in 2008 with the Milwaukee Brewers, but was fired with 12 games left in the season, with interim manager Dale Sveum finishing the Brewers’ wild-card run.

He was 457-502 in parts of six seasons in Milwaukee from 2003-08.

Yost, a former backup catcher for parts of six major league seasons with the Brewers, Texas Rangers and Montreal Expos in the 1980s, spent 12 years on the coaching staff of the Atlanta Braves under Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox before landing a managerial gig of his own.

Yost was the seventh overall pick by the New York Mets in the secondary phase of the June 1974 amateur draft out of Chabot College in California and wound up with the Brewers organization as a Rule 5 draft pick in December 1977.

He was part of the December 1983 trade that sent All-Star catcher Jim Sundberg from Texas to Milwaukee and played 15 professional seasons in all before retiring after the 1987 season.

According to Andy McCullough of the Kansas City Star, the brief nature of the extension could have a lot to do with Yost’s future plans.

Yost finished third in the American League Manager of the Year voting in 2014 behind winner Buck Showalter of Baltimore and runner-up Mike Scioscia of Angels and, showing the new era in which we live, 22 of his 35 managerial challenges were overturned on replay.

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