Cardinal managerial experience

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  • #204716
    1toughdominican
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    I can’t help but to notice that ever since Tony LaRussa left the Cardinals after their last WS Championship, that the Redbirds have been content to hire a total of three managers with zero practical experience managing a ballclub from a Big League dugout. I’ll also always maintain that the reason TLR supposedly retired at the end of the ’11 season was directly related to some sort of conflict with who then held the title of Redbird GM. I also believe that it’s no coincidence that the last 6 out of 7 NL Pennant winning Cardinal teams and the last 3 WS Championship teams were managed by individuals who not only featured plenty of practical experience successfully managing a Big League ballclub, but also demanded a reasonable share of input on roster decisions, trades and signing acquisitions. Additionally, both LaRussa and Whitey Herzog impressed me as personalities who wouldn’t tolerate any outside pressure from above on decisions made from the dugout. I’m detecting a pattern in the hiring of names like Matheny, Schildt and Marmol to manage the St. Louis Cardinals and the pattern strongly suggests to me that with the departure of LaRussa, both upper management and team ownership made a decision to never again name someone as the Redbird manager who might retain any sort of leverage insofar as attaining that leverage through successful practical experience.

    #204727
    bicyclemike
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    That could be. Terry Francona interviewed with us after TLR left, but he strikes me as demanding more independence as well.

    Joe Girardi is available again, but looking at the Phillies turn around this year under Rob Thompson, the bloom is off the rose with Giradi.

    #204728
    1toughdominican
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    BikeMike…It looks like the teams that advance to both league championship series will be managed by the the guy who replaced Girardi along with names like Francona, Baker and Melvin. The last 3 have been around for quite some time. I don’t believe in coincidence.

    #204731
    1982 willie
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    The Cardinals manager is just a figure head. The analytic departments run the club. It’s that way with lots of teams. It’s why the game is only a shadow of it’s former glory.

    #204736
    blingboy
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    Agree willie. Stay on script. Embrace the philosophy.

    A manager whose experience is in a different system is what Mo does not want.

    #204737
    bccran
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    Mo and Mike want the manager under their thumb. Simple as that.

    #204740
    ZTR
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    Are the Cardinals unique in MLB with their management / manager approach?

    #204749
    gscottar
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    The Cardinals manager is just a figure head. The analytic departments run the club. It’s that way with lots of teams. It’s why the game is only a shadow of it’s former glory.

    This is exactly right willie. The Cardinals are a top down organization so having a manager who wants to do things his way is not what they are looking for. This is why I have said a thousand times that getting all worked up about the manager is just heaping needless stress on yourself because most of the decisions come from above. There can be no other explanation for the firing of Shildt, who had a good W-L record. He wasn’t on board with the front office.

    #204750
    gscottar
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    Are the Cardinals unique in MLB with their management / manager approach?

    No, not really. I would say a large majority are ran from the top down. The Whitey Herzog days of being both the manager and GM are long gone.

    #204751
    1toughdominican
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    I often wonder why the Cardinals continue to have someone on their payroll that is termed a general manager when in reality the person that holds that title is nothing more than an at best a traveling secretary or office assistant. No one ever sees or even hears from the guy anymore. I mean, what exactly does he do other than shuffle paperwork?

    #204754
    gscottar
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    That is also an MLB trend. Most organizations do it. PBO’s run the front office. The assistant GM’s are promoted to GM because there is the thought it will prevent them from being hired from other organizations. It seems like shuffling the deck chairs to me but that is the way it works these days.

    #204755
    1toughdominican
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    Maybe the many poor decisions by the Redbird manager during the first game of the opening round can be attributed to a insecure working environment. He could possibly be working scared and be nervous all the time. People sometimes seem to have a propensity to forget things when they’re nervous. How else to explain assigning an injured pitcher to record 5 outs of positioning the IF in with the bases jammed, 1 out and a 1 run lead while playing at home? Maybe his mind wasn’t clear enough to focus on the task at hand as a result of feeling under the gun from above?

    #204756
    gscottar
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    If the pitcher was injured why was he on the roster in the first place? And who assigns the roster?

    Maybe this insecure work environment was also why Goldy and Arenado were doing their Tre Fletcher impersonations.

    #204757
    1toughdominican
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    gscottar…If that’s indeed the case, why not simply condense all three job titles of PBO, GM and MGR down to one guy, and then simply employ a handful of secretaries to assist him? They could save a dollar or two and that approach seemed to work pretty well in the case of Herzog. The way they’re operating now seems silly to me. It’s not at all unlike sending three people on a simple errand to pick up a loaf of bread. One of them to find the market, one to carry the loaf of bread, and one of them to find the way home.

    #204758
    gscottar
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    The Cardinals seem pleased with their GM apparently.

    #204759
    1toughdominican
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    Of course they’re happy with him. He does as he’s told, looks pretty and doesn’t say anything…

    #204762
    forsch31
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    I’m glad they signed Flores to an extension. I think he’s been doing pretty good in his job.

    #204764
    gscottar
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    Flores has been excellent forsch. He should keep moving up the ladder in the organization IMO or he will get an opportunity elsewhere.

    #204767
    Euro Dandy
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    If the pitcher was injured why was he on the roster in the first place? And who assigns the roster?

    Is this your genuine take….that it was a roster issue? It was clearly reported on before and after the debacle. Helsley was injured October 4 and removed from the game. He was deemed healthy enough to be on the playoff roster. He felt fine when he came in to relieve October 7 in the 8th inning against the Phils. Soon thereafter, the injury reared its ugly head and he lost his feel of the ball, which led to something not normal going awry in the 9th. Surprised you didn’t know all that. Given those facts, the manager and pitching coach should be keenly aware they should be watching Helsley’s mechanics and command like a hawk.

    This issue was not a roster decision. The issue was someone on the bench who could’ve mitigated an implosion occurring in real time needed to get his head out of his behind to make an obvious move sooner than he did.

    #204768
    Euro Dandy
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    This is exactly right willie. The Cardinals are a top down organization so having a manager who wants to do things his way is not what they are looking for.

    gscott, we agree here for sure. Although I think I like the “puppet” metaphor a little better than willie’s figurehead description. It casts an image of the underlings doing next to nothing that is of their own accord on the broader strategic issues…or else.

    #204770
    gscottar
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    Is this your genuine take….that it was a roster issue? It was clearly reported on before and after the debacle. Helsley was injured October 4 and removed from the game. He was deemed healthy enough to be on the playoff roster. He felt fine when he came in to relieve October 7 in the 8th inning against the Phils. Soon thereafter, the injury reared its ugly head and he lost his feel of the ball, which led to something not normal going awry in the 9th. Surprised you didn’t know all that. Given those facts, the manager and pitching coach should be keenly aware they should be watching Helsley’s mechanics and command like a hawk.

    This issue was not a roster decision. The issue was someone on the bench who could’ve mitigated an implosion occurring in real time needed to get his head out of his behind to make an obvious move sooner than he did.

    That is a fair take. The bench could have figured out sooner that the finger injury was flaring up again. What I am saying is that if it took that few pitches for the injury to flare up again then he really wasn’t ok, despite what was stated prior to the game. It was a big roll of the dice to have him on the roster IMO. Perhaps they thought that Helsley at 50% or 75% was good enough. He clearly wasn’t.

    #204771
    1toughdominican
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    Can anyone really imagine John Mozeliak or Mike Girsch telling Tony LaRussa or Whitey Herzog how to manage their respective ballclubs? If that were to ever to happen, I’d certainly like to be present during the conversation, but neither one of them impresses me as the sort of individual that possesses the testicular fortitude to do so.

    #204772
    gscottar
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    Well there is a reason that Walt Jocketty and Tony LaRussa are no longer with the organization. Bill DeWitt decided that the organization was going into a more analytical direction that relies more on statistics and the farm system instead of experience and gut instinct. DeWitt is the boss so that is what they are doing.

    #204773
    1toughdominican
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    Entirely aside from leaving an injured pitcher in the game, can anyone figure out why the decision was made to position the IF in with 1 out and the bases jammed up while still holding a 1 run lead while playing at HOME? I’d be curious to know why the IF was not positioned at DP depth under those circumstances. If there were no outs, I could understand it. If it were a tie ballgame, I could understand it. If the team was playing on the road, I could understand it. None of those three scenarios were present. If the IF were positioned in a sane manner, the weak GB off the bat of Segura is at worst an easy out and the game is still tied and at best a DP and either the Redbirds win the ballgame or the game enters the home half of the 9th a 2-2 tie ballgame. I think Marmol must have been as nervous as I was…

    #204774
    gscottar
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    I went back and found Derrick Goold’s game recap. This is what he wrote about that play.

    “You’ve got one out,” Marmol said. “The situation is basically you want to end the game there with a groundball double play. If there’s two outs that goes to Jack and go for the punch out. So, you’re just playing the outs and probability there.”

    The catch with groundballs?

    Sometimes they go where they aren’t caught.

    With Pallante, speedy Segura at the plate, the tying at third, and bases still loaded, the Cardinals played the infield in. The idea was to have middle infielders close enough that a hard grounder would become a double play and a soft grounder, like the one expected, would at least get the out at the plate.

    The Cardinals call it the ‘X-play,’ and Phillies manager Rob Thomson saw exactly what his opponent wanted to pull off: “They played the infield in to try to cut down the run or possibly double play from balls hit firm. But the ball luckily just got by the second base man, and we scored a couple runs there. Great at-bat. Just put the ball in play with two strikes and keep fighting.”

    Pallante got the soft grounder from Segura to the right side, but with Tommy Edman playing up toward the grass the ball squeaked to the outfield. It was not only slow enough for Segura to have negated any chance of a double play if the infield was back, but also slow enough that a Phillie scoring from second was a given.

    Edman said his attempt to try and slide, spin, and throw home meant he missed the ball and Segura had a two-run single to take the lead.

    “I was trying so hard to preserve the lead right there,” Edman said. “I tried to do too much with it. I was trying to make a play where I was sliding and spinning at the same time and then overran the ball a little bit, let the ball get to the outfield. I probably wouldn’t have had a play at home anyway. The best I could have done would have been an out at first.”

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