Volquez proves to be Royal pain for Jays
KANSAS CITY John Gibbons and Ned Yost spent most of two seasons on the same bench. They make it sound like a love- in. Based on the evidence, that seems like a slight exaggeration.
Not that acrimony tainted their relationship during 2010 and 2011 when Yost managed the Royals and Gibbons was his inherited bench coach. But Yost admits that he did not rely much on Gibbons. And by the end of 2011, Gibbons was on his way out as Yost’s alleged right- hand man.
“It was my fault, but I didn’t take full advantage of Gibby when he was here,” Yost said before his Royals beat Gibbons’s Blue Jays 5- 0 in the opener of the American League Championship Series on Friday night.
“At that time I was still a little bit on the hard- headed side and managed the game all by myself,” Yost said. “And here the last couple of years I’ve learned to include my coaches a lot more in the decisionmaking process.”
Both Yost and Gibbons have drawn plenty of criticism, some of it groundless, during their time as managers, but Game 1 of the ALCS presented no serious decisionmaking challenges for either one. They ran out their regular lineups and best available starting pitchers. Toronto’s Marco Estrada pitched well, but simply made more mistakes than Kansas City’s Edinson Volquez, whose pitches were darting and diving throughout his six innings.
The Jays, with baseball’s best offence, managed just a pair of singles off Volquez, and one more off three K. C. relievers.
The Jays’ batters love hard fastballs, and almost nothing Volquez threw was straight. On occasion, especially in the fourth inning, Toronto hitters thought the wrinkles on Volquez’s pitches were fooling umpire Tony Randazzo. Jose Bautista was especially vexed, openly displaying his displeasure on the field and in the dugout after taking three called strikes.
Edwin Encarnacion appeared to aggravate his chronic finger injury on a swing in his third at- bat. Justin Smoak pinch- hit for him in the eighth and fouled out with two runners aboard. The Jays also stranded a pair in the sixth.
K. C. scored twice off Estrada in the third on two doubles and a single. Salvador Perez hit a solo homer in the fourth. LaTroy Hawkins yielded the other two runs in the eighth.
Estrada allowed three runs on six hits in 5 2/ 3 innings of work.
The series continues here Saturday at 4: 07 ET.
After the Jays fired Gibbons in mid- 2008, ending his first managerial stint in the majors, the Royals new manager, Trey Hillman, hired Gibbons — an old friend — as bench coach the following season. Gibbons stayed on when Hillman was dismissed and Yost was hired in May 2010, and remained through Yost’s hard- headed phase.
“I love Gibby,” Yost told reporters before Game 1. “You guys that work around Gibby know what kind of person he is. He’s a tremendous guy. He’s a funny guy. He’s a loose guy. He’s a very smart guy.”
The echo from Gibbons: “I love Ned. Ned took good care of me. He kept me around. And I loved my time here.”
Their personalities differ. Yost is not especially funny, nor particularly loose. But Gibbons said they are more similar than appearances indicate.
“We have a lot of the same values,” Gibbons said. “We do a lot of things the same way. We take the same criticism a lot of times.”
In September, with the Royals heading to the World Series, Jerry Crasnick of ESPB. com wrote: “On the list of managers who are maligned by their team’s fan bases, Yost, Atlanta’s Fredi Gonzalez and Toronto’s John Gibbons probably win the gold, silver and bronze medals.”
As the Royals’ bench coach for three seasons, Gibbons saw the nucleus of K. C.’ s current team reach the majors — no pitchers, but the position players comprised “some of the best young talent I’d ever seen,” he said.
General manager Dayton Moore built around the likes of Perez, Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas, and traded for up- and- comers Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar, then went out and added the pitching that completed the puzzle.
And Yost was the right man to bring the kids along, Gibbons said.
“He’s done a tremendous job with this group,” Gibbons said. “One thing, they all came up young, and I probably never seen a guy that had as much patience and believed in his guys when they were young here, and he stuck by his guns, literally. And it’s paid off for him.
“They went to the World Series last year. It could go either way this year.”