The weekend was busy for the Kansas City Royals.
After conducting a series of interviews, the team appointed Matt Quatraro as their new manager for the 2023 season.
It’s his first managerial gig in MLB after years of coaching and looking to land one.
He will replace the outgoing Mike Matheny, who was the skipper for the last three seasons.
Quatraro had been with the Tampa Bay Rays before landing on the Royals.
The Rays sent a classy goodbye message in the form of a tweet after the news was revealed.
“Congrats Q! KC, ya got a good one to lead your ballclub,” they tweeted.
Congrats Q 🙌
KC, ya got a good one to lead your ballclub pic.twitter.com/Vcug6pkM5E
— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) October 30, 2022
Quatraro is a Rays man through and through.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays selected him in the eighth round of the 1996 Major League Baseball Draft.
With the Rays, he reached Triple-A but never played in MLB.
After retiring, he pursued a career in coaching.
Quatraro Has Been Preparing For Years
Upon retiring, Quatraro worked as a manager and catching instructor in the Devil Rays’ minor league system.
He started to build himself a career as a hitting coach and manager in the minors before getting his first chance to coach at the MLB level, in 2010.
From 2010 to 2013, Quatraro was the Rays’ hitting coordinator.
Then, he joined the Cleveland Guardians as an assistant hitting coach in 2014.
He rejoined the Rays as the third base coach in 2017, and was their bench coach since 2019.
He has been preparing for this moment for at least two decades, and is now ready to show his talent as an MLB manager with a rebuilding club that has some really good young hitters.
If Kansas City can get some pitching, they could start thinking about contending relatively soon.
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