Former Royals manager Ned Yost is bullish on the team’s chances this season

Former Royals manager Ned Yost has never been shy about sharing his opinion, and he offered a blunt assessment on the 2022 Royals.

The Royals leaned heavily on their young starting pitching, but finished last in the American League Central with a 65-97 record. After a 7-14 start to the season, the Royals were never in playoff contention, even with an expanded postseason field.

“I felt a little bit last year that this group should have taken a little bit of a step forward,” Yost said Wednesday on Bally Sports Kansas City’s broadcast. “Not a big step, because it’s always been my experience that it takes a group of guys two and a half years to get to a point where they can really compete. What they’re trying to do is to get to the point where they can play .500 baseball and then here we go, we run with it, and, you know, I think that they’re gonna make big strides this year.”

Yost has been watching the Royals this spring and he’s taken note of the team’s strong showing on offense. They lead Major League Baseball in average, hits and runs scored.

It’s more than the results that have caught Yost’s attention, and he praised Alec Zumwalt, the Royals’ director of hitting performance/player development.

“I’m really impressed with what Alec Zumwalt has done with the hitting and the hitting coaches,” Yost said. “You watch their at-bats, you watch their approach. They’re hitting the ball hard the opposite way. It seems like every situation that I’ve seen with a runner on third base, less than two outs, they’ve gotten the job done.

“They’ve been very consistent in those types of situations, and that’s key. That’s big anytime you can pick up situations like that. I have yet to see them miss one yet. They’re just doing a lot of things really well right now.”

The Royals have a Cactus League-best 11-2 record and they have a run differential of plus-42.

Yost isn’t discounting what the Royals have done in those games simply because they’ve been played in Arizona.

“People say, ‘Yeah, it’s spring training,’ but you know what? This is where it starts,” Yost said. “This is where you start to get the vibes. This is where you start to understand what kind of group you got. Like I said, I’m really enthused about the direction that they’re heading.”

Here is Yost on the Royals.