Royals built wisely through the draft and solid pitching acquisitions

It has been a long, strange trip for Dale Sveum, from taking the blame for the Chicago Cubs’ woes to watching a young Kansas City Royals lineup grow up overnight into the surprising team that leads the Baltimore Orioles, 2-0, in the American League Championship Series.

It was a little more than a year ago that Sveum was walking home from Wrigley Field after being fired the night before as Cubs manager by team President Theo Epstein, who said that Sveum’s “tough love” approach wasn’t working with the young players.

During the walk, Sveum got a phone call from Royals Manager Ned Yost, an old friend whom he had replaced as manager in Milwaukee with 12 games remaining in the 2008 season, leaving Sveum to manage the team into the playoffs and during a National League division series loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Yost asked Sveum what was going on.

“I got fired,” he said.

Yost told Sveum he already knew because he had seen it on TV and offered Sveum a job as the Royals’ third base coach. Two months into the 2014 season, with the Royals last in the AL in runs, home runs and slugging percentage, and next-to-last in on-base percentage, Sveum was moved to hitting coach, and Pedro Grifol was reassigned.

Now, America is getting to know the names of Mike Moustakas, Lorenzo Cain, Eric Hosmer and Alex Gordon, all of whom have come up with clutch hits in the Royals’ improbable postseason run.

The Royals built the team primarily through the draft and key acquisitions of free-agent pitchers.

“You look at the drafts, Hosmer, Gordon, ‘Moose’ (Moustakas), they’re all first-round picks that are all hitting now,” Sveum said. “Nobody had a career year this year except maybe ‘Lo’ Cain and maybe [Alcides] Escobar. That’s probably what [Escobar’s] going to tap out at, 50 RBIs and .280. But for other guys, there’s way more in the tank.”

“And hopefully this kind of stuff makes them realize it’s not OK just to swing out of the zone and to try to pull everything. You understand that these things happen when you have good at-bats and concentrate on at-bat to at-bat level.”

Yost said the team reminds him of the Atlanta Braves’ kids when he was a minor league manager in the organization and the young Brewers teams he had that included Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun and Corey Hart.

“I told our group 2 1/2 years is when we’re going to get to a point where we’re able to contend,” Yost said. “And the 2 1/2 -year mark was about at the All-Star break last year. And we weren’t really doing well at that point. I was thinking to myself, ‘OK, well, it might be a little more than 2 1/2 years.’

“But from that point, the All-Star break last year, they took off. And we were finally eliminated with like three or four games left in the season last year. You see where we are this year. When you’ve got a group of players that are young, enthusiastic, and athletic that have great chemistry, that have won championships together at (Class-A) ball, double A and triple A, you know it’s a matter of time until they got to the big league level and would do the same thing here.

“Now, did some of our fans back home get a little impatient? Yeah, a little bit. But still, you can see why they got impatient; 29 years of not going to the playoffs, they wanted it. But I’ve always been one to have faith in my players. I’ve got a pretty good idea what type of guys we have and where we were going. And it’s easy to stay patient in that respect.”

Sveum has stayed in the background and appears comfortable with his role. The Cubs never gave him a team to win with, so it was difficult to judge his two-year stint in Chicago. If tough love didn’t work for Cubs hitters, it certainly seems to have done the job with the Royals’ young team.

In spring training, Sveum said he’d like a chance to manage again. And with the Royals’ current success, he might be opening up some eyes.

But he laughs when the subject is broached.

“I don’t hold my breath,” he said. “I was fortunate to get a job because of my past with Theo. I’m not a politician. I don’t go out searching for a job. That’s just what it is.”