Kansas City Royals choose new manager: It’s Tampa Bay Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro

The Kansas City Royals’ first-time head of baseball operations, J.J. Picollo, has selected a first-time manager to lead the ballclub through the next stage of its rebuilding process.

The Royals announced early Sunday evening that they are hiring Tampa Bay Rays bench coach Matt Quatraro as their next skipper.

Quatraro, 48, is the first key hire of Picollo’s tenure as executive vice president and general manager. Quatraro was the assistant hitting coach in Cleveland from 2014-17. He became the Rays’ third-base coach in 2018.

“I’m grateful to Mr. (John) Sherman and the ownership group, J.J. and the front office, and everyone else with the Royals for this opportunity,” Quatraro said in a Royals new release. “I already knew the talent on the roster and how great the fans in Kansas City are, and the interview process convinced me that the terrific things I’d heard about the organization’s culture are true. I can’t wait to get started, and for my family to get to Kansas City and be part of that community.”

In Kansas City, he’ll guide a young team. Thirteen Royals players made their debuts in the majors this season. Twenty-one KC rookies appeared in games this year, tied for third-most in franchise history behind the Royals’ teams of 2004 (23) and 2002 (22).

The Royals have not made the playoffs since their 2015 World Series championship.

Quatraro replaces Mike Matheny, who was fired after the Royals went 65-97 this season and finished in last place in the AL Central, nine wins shy of their total from 2021. Picollo fired Matheny and pitching coach Cal Eldred after the club’s season finale.

“We are extremely excited to have Matt leading our club and core of talent,” Picollo said in a news release from the Royals. “Matt has great experiences throughout his career that have prepared him for this. He thoroughly impressed us all during our interview process and is clearly respected across the industry. We are looking forward to working alongside Matt to bring winning baseball to our great fans.”

Quatraro’s deal will be for three years plus an option years, similarly to the deal Royals gave Matheny in the winter of 2019. The Royals picked up Matheny’s option year for 2023 during spring training, but switched gears following this season.

Quatraro comes from a Rays organization that has experienced incredible success in recent years. He spent the past five seasons on the major-league coaching staff under manager Kevin Cash.

Royals chairman and CEO John Sherman weighed in on the hire of Quatraro in the Royals’ news release announcing the hire.

“J.J. and his staff designed and executed a rigorous process that revealed Matt to be the best leader for our club,” Sherman said. “Matt is widely respected throughout baseball with a proven record and tangible contributions in two organizations that built winning cultures through creativity and innovation. We are thrilled to welcome Matt, his wife Chris, and sons George and Leo to the Kansas City community.”

A native of New York, Quatraro spent his first season with Tampa Bay as third base coach, but he’d been Tampa Bay’s bench coach since 2019.

This season, the Rays went 86-76 and placed third in the AL East. They lost to the Cleveland Guardians in the Wild Card Series.

During Quatraro’s tenure on Cash’s staff, the Rays won a pair of division titles and the AL pennant during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

An eighth-round draft pick of the Rays in 1996, Quatraro spent parts of seven seasons in the minors with the Rays (1996-2002) as a catcher. He climbed as far as Triple-A. In 2003, he went to minor-league camp with the New York Yankees before retiring.

Quatraro became the first former player in the Rays system to join the organization as a coach, first as a catching instructor in the minors in 2004. He finished that season as a hitting coach for the Rays’ short-season Single-A affiliate.

He went on to manage four years in the minors from 2006-09. Then he became the Rays’ minor-league hitting coordinator for four years from 2010-13.

The Cleveland Indians (now Guardians) hired Quatraro in 2014 as their assistant hitting coach in the majors. He remained on manager Terry Francona’s staff until he returned to the Rays alongside Cash, who’d also been on Francona’s staff, following the 2017 season.

The Royals’ hire of Quatraro was first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan.