Ned Yost, Like The Rest Of Us, Was Shocked To Learn His Team Hasn't Lost 20 Games Yet

Ned Yost, brick-breaker and bee-tamer, can’t take things one game at a time because he isn’t sure how many games his team has played. Coasting on organizational goodwill from the Royals’ 2015 World Series win, he’s pretty firmly in autopilot, to the point where finding out they’re 5-17 instead of the far bleaker 5-20 counts as a nice surprise:

After last night’s loss to the White Sox, Yost’s Royals slid to 5-18, one step closer to the dreaded 5-20. They’ve lost two fewer games than Cincinnati, who own the league’s worst record. In case you haven’t been following the Royals any closer than their manager has, here are some other alarming stats: they’re last in the majors in runs scored, last in the AL in dingers, boast a 5.21 team ERA, and the have the third-worst run differential in the league.

It’ll be a long season, even if at this rate Yost may think it ends sometime in July. If the Royals front office takes the same hard-line stance to managerial indifference as it does to players watching porn, he may not be wrong.