The recent track record of success has been different, but there are some broad similarities between Matt Quatraro’s current and former teams, the Royals and Rays, respectively.
He’s not paying much mind to it, though.
Quatraro is in his first year managing Kansas City after five years as Kevin Cash’s bench coach in Tampa. In that time, Quatraro was part of some really impressive Rays teams, which made it to the World Series once and went to the playoffs each of the last four seasons.
The Royals, meanwhile, have been mired in a lengthy rebuild. There are some signs of a potential upswing, as they're loaded with exciting young talent that should make Kansas City a more competitive team in the foreseeable future. Quatraro is being tasked with unlocking that – and given recent performance, payroll, and market size, there are some similarities to the state of the Rays when he became bench coach.
But the Rays are not something that gets brought up often, Quatraro said Wednesday in his weekly appearance on Fescoe in the Morning.
“Oh sure, market size is similar and the payrolls are similar, those kinds of things,” Quatraro said. “But we don’t by any means talk about on a daily basis what they’re doing or how many wins they have or any of that kind of stuff.
“We’re going to be concerned with the players we have in our locker room, in our organization and we’re going to try to make the best decisions we can to continue to build depth and make good decisions off the field and on the field.”
The Royals currently sit at 3-9, a stark contrast to the remarkable start Quatraro’s former team is off to. The Rays have yet to lose through 11 games, sweeping the Tigers, Nationals and A’s so far. They’ve won the first two contests of their current four-game set with the Red Sox.
“That is an amazing start,” Quatraro said. “It takes depth, they’ve obviously built a strong pitching staff – which, every night you have a chance to win when you’re minimizing what the other team gets offensively.”
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