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Normally I’d be writing a GBU (Good, Bad, Ugly) article about the recently completed series with the Boston Red Sox. But why bother? Does anyone care about individual good performances when the team got swept at home by the worst offense in baseball?
Don’t get me wrong, there were some guys who performed well. I just don’t care enough to mention them, and you shouldn’t want to read about them. We have bigger fish to fry.
After the Red Sox, a team that just fired their manager and entire hitting staff mind you, completed the sweep Wednesday night, I felt sure that Royals General Manager JJ Picollo would make some changes on yesterday’s off-day.
Instead the off-day came and went with no news out of 1 Royal Way. JJ spent the day sitting on his manicured hands while the rest of us were reading about Rashee Rice’s latest escapades.
Somebody had to get fired right? I’m not talking about the manager, the Royals gave Quatraro a three year extension in January. They aren’t firing him in May.
A likely candidate seemed to be third base coach Vance Wilson. He’s awful at the only real decision a third base coach has to make….when to send a runner to the plate. Worse yet, this is not a new development…
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I’m sure Vance is a lovely guy, and kudos to him for apparently dropping a bunch of weight, but he has to go. Yesterday.
While we are at it, let’s pack first base coach Damon Hollins’s bags and send him out the door with Wilson. Have you seen the Royals baserunning this year? And last year? Hollins is the team “baserunning coordinator”. He has to go. Yesterday.
Hitting coach Alec Zumwalt was the lightning rod for fan’s criticisms much of 2025, and nothing much has changed this year either. Of course he should have been fired at the end of last season. Instead, JJ let the assistants go and brought in a couple more chuckleheads to sit at the feet of Zumwalt.
He never should have been brought back in 2026, and the quicker JJ fixes that mistake the better. I know this may shock a lot of Royals fans, but career minor league PITCHERS might not make the best HITTING coaches.
Look, will firing these three guys somehow magically turn the Royals into contenders? Probably not, and that’s not the reason they need to go. Firing them will send the message to the paying customers that the front office actually cares about the product, and isn’t going to be complacent in the face of abject incompetence.
That’s why they have to go. It’s not even June yet and Royals fans are tuning out in droves. They perceive the team as lifeless and uncaring, and the management as uninterested in doing anything about it. The word for that is apathy, and apathy is what destroys general managers careers.
JJ needs to make some moves. Fire some coaches, bench some guys who are not hustling on the field (I’m looking at you Maikel Garcia), do something to show the fans you care about the brand of baseball they are watching.
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