Royals Fans Should Blame Ned Yost, Not Joakim Soria

Sep 4, 2016; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals pitcher Joakim Soria (48) delivers a pitch against the Detroit Tigers during the eighth inning at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports

KC Royals fans should blame manager Ned Yost for using a reliever caught in a career-worst slump rather than Joakim Soria.

Joakim Soria used to be one of the best relievers in baseball. He did it right here for the Kansas City Royals, racking up 160 saves in five seasons between 2007-2011. Soria posted an outstanding 2.40 ERA and represented Kansas City in two all-star games. He might haven been the best player on the team during that time span.

It’s no secret that he’s been awful in 2016 after he returned to the Royals with a three-year, $25 million contract. Soria’s 4.12 ERA is bad enough. But, the worst part is that he has surrendered the lead in 14 games. He’s been even worse in the last three weeks. Soria has given up leads in five losses when the KC Royals were fighting to stay alive in the AL playoff race.

At this point, Kansas City Royals fans can’t help but cringe when he comes into a close game.

However, we shouldn’t blame Joakim Soria for those blown games. I have no doubt that Soria is giving his all. He is a proud man who excelled when the KC Royals were nothing short of awful. I doubt he suddenly lost his desire to win because he’s too busy counting his money.

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Instead, most of the blame should fall on manager Ned Yost. Yost is the one who has insisted on putting the struggling Soria in position to lose games.

Sep 18, 2016; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost (3) comes to the mound to make a pitcher change in the eighth inning against the Chicago White Sox at Kauffman Stadium. The Royals won 10-3. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

Ned Yost Deserves The Blame Instead Of Joakim Soria

Kansas City Star writer Jesse Newell wrote an excellent story about Joakim Soria’s impact on the Royals this season. Newell’s article made two key points clear: 1) Soria has been awful as measured by Win Probability Added (WPA). WPA is a metric that adds up how much each player added or subtracted from his team’s win probability over a season and 2) Ned Yost has continually used Soria in situations where his peers would not.

Many pundits are talking about Soria surrendering 14 leads on the season. However, blaming him for all 14 of those losses isn’t sound. In many cases, the Kansas City Royals still had a chance to rally after Soria gave up a lead. WPA attempts to quantify just how the actions of one player affected the probability of his team winning a game using historical performance data for specific situations.

Soria’s WPA is -2.32 after Tuesday night’s debacle. That’s 232% in winning chances lost on the season. Soria’s WPA is the second worst mark among 298 relievers in MLB.

As for the second point, Newell writes:

The numbers also show Soria is not being used like other un-clutch relievers. “Average leverage index” or gmLI, lets us know how pressure-packed a situation is when a pitcher enters the game, with anything above 1 being considered above average.

Soria’s 1.44 average leverage index ranks 36th among 138 qualified relievers. Among the top 40, only four players have negative WPAs: Cory Gearrin (negative-0.28), Steve Cishek (negative-0.31), Erasmo Ramirez (negative-0.84) and Soria (negative-2.10).

What does it mean? For this season at least, no other manager has put as poor of a reliever as Soria in as many clutch situations as Yost.

When you consider that the Kansas City Royals rank 6th in major league baseball with a bullpen ERA of 3.42, it’s not as if everyone else has a horde of better options. Yost is CHOOSING to put one of the worst relievers in major-league baseball as measured by WPA into key situations.

That’s setting up both Joakim Soria, and his entire team, to fail.

In the clearest terms, a manager’s tactical goal is to put his players in positions where they are likely to succeed. Ned Yost is doing the exact opposite with his “loyalty” to Joakim Soria.

Those choices all rest on Ned Yost.

Sep 20, 2016; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Indians pinch hitter Brandon Guyer (6) celebrates his walk-off RBI double with teammates during the ninth inning against the Kansas City Royals at Progressive Field. The Indians won 2-1. Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

Just How Many Losses Should We Blame On Ned Yost

While Joakim Soria struggled most of the season, he did enjoy a strong run in August. He pitched 10.1 consecutive scoreless innings in 11 appearances between August 5 to August 28. At that point, Soria had reduced his ERA to 3.67 and appeared to be turning his season around.

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Soria then surrendered a one-run lead in the seventh inning of a 5-4 loss to the New York Yankees on August 30.

Ok, it’s reasonable for Yost to discount that as a blip. And, indeed, Soria held the Tigers scoresless in a one-inning stint on September 3 in a 5-2 win. Soria then blew his second lead in a week the next day in a 6-5 loss to Detroit. At that point, given that it was the 11th lead Soria had blown on the season, Yost should have put Soria on the back burner in high leverage situations. You couldn’t afford to entrust games to a reliever suffering through a cold spell in an pennant race.

Instead, Yost allowed Soria to blow leads against the Twins on September 7 and the A’s on September 14. He also put Soria into a a tie game on Tuesday 2-1 loss to Cleveland with runners on first and second in the ninth.

Oh, Yost also used successfully use Soria in two wins over the White Sox. On September 10, Soria pitched a scoreless inning to maintain a two-run lead in the eighth inning of a 6-5 Kansas City win. On September 17, Soria did allow an inherited baserunner to score on a double to reduce a two-run lead to one. But, he got a hold in a 3-2 KC win.

Add up all five high leverage situations, and Yost’s use of Soria cost his team exactly 1.00 WPA (100%).

However, that accounting ignores any hangover effect that came from those bad decisions. In particular, the blown game against the A’s sent the KC Royals into a three-game skid in which sub .500 Chicago and Oakland outscored them 29-9. Indeed, the Royals looked looked like zombies for the next 17 innings as the last place A’s outscored them 22-0. Kansas City tacked on five meaningless runs in a 14-0 loss on September 16.

Even without the hangover effect, costing your team a full game over 16 days due to your devotion to one player is pretty darn bad. Add in two losses from the hangover effect, and you get something like three games. That’s a disaster when you trail the Orioles by five games for the second AL wild card.