Former Royals managers Ned Yost and Mike Matheny were not exactly paragons of analytical thinking, and by the time you go back to the pre-Yost days of Trey Hillman, Buddy Bell, and beyond, the modern analytical movement was limited to a few cutting edge teams.
Matt Quatraro, then, brings a bit of a culture shock, coming from the Tampa Bay Rays and Cleveland Guardians school of analytics. That’s a big deal for a lot of reasons, and one of the most clearly obvious is in regards to lineups. Yost and Matheny tinkered, for sure, but Quatraro’s commitment to the analytics has resulted in some, shall we say, unusual looking lineups in this early season, a theme that continued when bench coach Paul Hoover took over when Quatraro tested positive for COVID-19.