Manager Matt Quatraro reflects Royals’ commitment to change, but a pivotal one looms

Say this for the Royals: Having lost an average of 98 games in their last four full seasons (discounting the 26-34 pandemic-shortened 2020 season), the status quo is being drummed out. Change is the watchword.

The latest flourish in the facelift came on Sunday, when they named Tampa Bay bench coach Matt Quatraro to replace Mike Matheny as their manager over internal candidates Pedro Grifol, Scott Thorman and Vance Wilson among other external interviewees.

In the wake of Dayton Moore being fired in September after 16 years as the principal leader of the club’s baseball operations either as general manager or team president, the search was engineered by J.J. Picollo, the executive VP of baseball operations and GM.

“J.J. and his staff designed and executed a rigorous process that revealed Matt to be the best leader for our club,” Royals chairman and CEO John Sherman said in a statement. “Matt is widely respected throughout baseball with a proven record and tangible contributions in two organizations that built winning cultures through creativity and innovation.”

If you parse those words a bit, you might see some hints of what’s animating their approach.

“Creativity and innovation” might as well be in neon, the way I see it, given Sherman’s belief that the franchise needs to be more analytics-oriented than it has been. That was something he stated rather bluntly the day Moore was dismissed: “I think sometimes perhaps the data is not as prominent as it should be in this organization ... We have to make more data-driven decisions.”

And “proven record and tangible contributions in two organizations,” including in Cleveland (2014-17) during Sherman’s tenure (2016-19) as minority owner, read to me like an underscoring of a need for fresh voices with different perspectives.

All of which makes sense.

Not that the internal candidates didn’t merit, or receive, serious consideration. But at least from the outside looking in, it seems evident that — even all else being equal — any tiebreakers would favor a new flavor and viewpoint.

All the more so when the candidate who emerged has the compelling profile of Quatraro, 48, who by all appearances was a key part of Tampa Bay’s staff amid four playoff appearances in the last five seasons (including a World Series berth in 2020). We look forward to getting to know him starting with his news conference on Thursday.

In the meantime, we know more about what he symbolizes than anything else: a road less traveled for the Royals in recent times. And, thus, a message to players and fans that has more clarity by not straddling two different worlds.

Especially at a time the clamor for a reset is resonating loudest through apathy: Along their way to a 97-loss season that marked a jarring regression from a 74-88 record in 2021, the Royals drew fewer than 16,000 a game (15,972) at Kauffman Stadium for the first time since 1975 (not including in 2020 and 2021 because of pandemic-mandated attendance limits).

Not what you want. Ever … but even less when a fundamental part of the current mission is to gather support for what Sherman calls “a downtown ballpark district.”

Some might still be skeptical about the depth of the churn, perhaps because of Picollo’s history with Moore.

But while Picollo is a Moore disciple who played for him in college and long was mentored by him, there’s been no confusion about the fact he is carving out his own approach since he made the decision early in the season to fire hitting coach Terry Bradshaw — something Moore disagreed with at the time, and normally wouldn’t have considered that early in the season, but ultimately signed off on.

So, yes, the changes are sweeping and still unfurling.

No word yet on whether the club will be producing a new version of “The Royals Way,” which instructor Rusty Kuntz told The Star in 2018 was a “phone book” laying out guidelines and expectations of everything from how the players should dress and carry themselves to relay setups.

We’re kidding … we think.

But more change is ahead, to be sure, including in one big way to parallel the restructuring of the hitting department over the last few years.

If not in terms of personnel in the organization, that’s expected to be addressed at least in terms of broader philosophical changes to the way the Royals raise pitchers. There’s been an indiscernible kink in that pipeline for a while now, not to mention their inability to correct it at the major league level.

That was illuminated again last season when the Royals had the 27th-highest ERA (4.70) in baseball and too often were out of games early because of bad starting pitching.

For all their efforts to enter a brave new world, in fact, fixing that is going to be essential to Quatraro’s prospects of reviving the parent club.

Because without that gear being engaged, all the exhilarating young talent emerging on the field and being guided by a bright new manager won’t be able to make the only real change any Royals fan wants: a return to winning.