CBS – For much of the postseason, Royals manager Ned Yost has been second-guessed on his moves, particularly his rigidity in dealing with his bullpen.
That is, Kelvin Herrera gets the seventh inning, Wade Davis gets the eighth and Greg Holland gets the ninth. He has strayed slightly, but if there’s a way to get someone other than Herrera into the sixth, Yost finds it on occasion. He even freely admits how much easier it is to manage the team once it gets to the seventh.
“My concern innings are the fifth and the sixth innings,” Yost said. “Once we get past the sixth inning, the guesswork is done. We have pretty good success with Herrera, Davis and Holland.”
In Game 2 of the World Series Wednesday night — an eventual 7-2 Royals victory — there was no messing around. Yost had Herrera up in the bullpen almost immediately in the sixth inning. He brought him in with one out and a tie game in the sixth.
Also factor in the plays that led to Yost pulling Yordano Ventura. Buster Posey’s single to center was a lazy liner that wasn’t hit particularly hard. Ventura then recorded an out before a Hunter Pence infield hit. If Yost were sitting back, he could have at least tried to justify leaving Ventura in the game. Also note that Brandon Belt, a lefty, was coming up. Yost could have justified bringing in Brandon Finnegan to face Belt.
But, again, Yost wasn’t playing any games. He was going for the kill here. Aggressively and by design.
“I felt very strongly going into the sixth inning that the next run scored was probably going to win the game,” Yost said. “I made the defensive change and then when those two runners got on, I brought on Kel to get those outs.”
It wasn’t just the bullpen, either. As Yost mentioned, heading into the sixth, he went toJarrod Dyson in center field, pushing Lorenzo Cain to right field and Nori Aoki to the bench. He often does this late in the game, but this was the sixth inning of a tie game. He usually likes to get Dyson in via pinch runner. But the theme was that Yost wasn’t messing around.
We saw it again in the bottom of the sixth. Remember, Yost likes to play small ball. The Royals love to bunt and steal. Such moves sometime stem from the desire to play for one run instead of taking a chance that it’ll blossom into a big inning. When Cain singled, he didn’t run andEric Hosmer wasn’t asked to bunt. Hosmer walked and then Billy Butler wasn’t asked to bunt. He’d single in the go-ahead run and the big inning was underway. The Royals would get five runs that inning. A bunt probably means one or two, maximum.
That wasn’t all, though. Butler was removed for pinch runner Terrance Gore. The rookie speedster can fly, of course, but second base was occupied by Hosmer. Gore wasn’t coming in to steal. He was there to make sure they had the best chance possible to get his run around. It was a risk, too, because it was possible the Royals only scored one run that inning and then later were stuck with Gore in the DH spot instead of Butler.
Again, Yost wasn’t fooling around. He was aggressively going all out to win this baseball game before the seventh inning. And, once again, it worked. The Royals took the game and have evened the series in front of a trip to San Francisco.