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It seems to be self evident that attending spring training furthers the goal of a successful season and not attending ST does not further that goal. I think at this point there is nothing to be gained by arguing about that aspect of it.
I accept that Marmol could have some other individuals or subset of the roster in mind. Assuming the quote is accurate, it does sound like carefully chosen words. So I think any guesses as to who or what he means must be weighed against those words. I would be curious to know your take on what he is talking about.
Goold defended Marmol for publicly criticizing O’Neill for lack of hustle, blaming the clubhouse for not handing it themselves.
So it appears I am not the only one critical of clubhouse leadership. I notice no one has taken a swing at Goold though, which hardly seems fair. But I totally understand.
I believe the quote is accurate, as a number of media members present shared it. I included it here so we all have the same understanding without the editorializing of Fansided and the like.
I have absolutely no idea who/what Marmol was talking about, and as a media member myself, speculating without anything to back it up is not a place I would go. There are way too many possibilities and the stakes are very high to make specific accusations or even insinuations.
99.99% of what happens in the dugout, bullpen, clubhouse, training rooms, team flights, team hotels, etc. is not visible to us. My only point is that I doubt the WBC is a significant factor. You may feel differently. So be it.
I posted the Goold chat comments because I am not favoring any particular position. Just sharing information.
Personally I have noted oneils lack of hustle many times over the few years he’s been here. Some plays in the outfield, that one play where they had the guy in a rundown I believe last year where everyone was in on it even other ofs but oneil was just standing like he was a monkey in the middle. The base running play in question by others. I don’t agree however with the way marmol handled it or really anything. If he wants the team to win a championship, maybe he should voluntary quit since the Cardinals aren’t going to fire him. I think lots more needs to be done other than getting rid of those 3 players for this team to really compete
The article was garbage. Conteras is not a problem. I think Marmol was talking about O’Neill. The Cardinals are not a mess. Changes need to be made but mostly adding effective pitchers.
I’m sorry but a team thats airing their internal grievances in public and finished with 71 wins and a payroll north of 170 million is no doubt a freaking mess. It was far more than the pitching. It was an all systems failure of a season with no easy fix.
I’ve thought that O’Neill was pulling up on the ball rather than running hard, and sometimes, diving to make the catch. It’s only a guess, but in my thinking, I figured that his agent told him something like…’You hit 34 HR and OPSed .912 in 2021. You’ve made some highlight reel plays and won a Gold Glove. That’s enough right there to get you a fat contract. Do whatever you have to do to NOT GET HURT.’ So what it boils down to is …’It’s the money, stupid!’ Just my opinion.
I’m a person who accepts the things he cannot change. So I avoid complaining about Mo or Oli or the ownership. For now, they are the owner, pobo, and manager. If the manager wants the players to focus on championships, I’m behind that 100%. But you don’t have to flap your lips any further than that. Action speaks louder than words. If there’s players who dont fit that philosophy, we are all bright enough to figure that out when we see the 2024 roster.
Not defending Marmol, but just pointing out how hard it is to please everyone. The prior managers took heat from some fans for not being candid enough when the team played poorly.
I took another look at just what question Marmol was responding to. Here is what Goold said:
“I asked Marmol what was the first thing he would do after today’s game ended and ‘24 begins:”
I emphasized “first thing” because I had not thought about that aspect before.
Marmol could have responded to that by mentioning the pitching staff/rotation rebuild that Mo has mentioned. That would have been the safe answer. Theoretically, he could even have mentioned the baseball operations/player development rebuild, which we are told by a respected source is a thing and is of equal priority to the FO. Its always smart to publicly think whatever your boss thinks. But instead he mentioned weeding out players not focussed on winning a championship.
That raises the question: Does that comes from the mind of Ollie and reflects his personal view of what is the “first thing” that needs to be done to get ready for next season? Or did Ollie reveal another thing that the FO is focussed on doing this winter? And if it is a FO thing, is it seen as a higher priority even than pitching and player development, since the question put to Ollies is what is the first thing to be done?
In my opinion, under no circumstance does Marmol make that ‘weed out’ comment publicly.
On the surface it’s self serving and has every chance of blowing up in his and the Cardinal’s face.
It could make trading players difficult as in, who wants to trade for a selfish player and bring that into a locker room?
What if O’Neil is still on the roster next year?
In fact, now every guy they don’t bring back is ‘under suspicion’.
There is zero benefit to throwing that sound byte out there and it has the potential to cause all kinds of issues – and it probably will.
If it’s true then you just handle it internally – if we have a rotten apple in the barrel trust me the players and coaches all know who he / they are. Now, just like us, everyone is speculating on who he’s talking about. Bad, bad, bad.
Is it hard to trade players after you publicly blast them for being detrimental to the team? This organization just keeps getting more and more dysfunctional from the neck up.
But Wainwright would automatically be gone after game 162, so weeding him out would not be the first thing to be done to get ready for 2024. The same for anyone else who is already gone or would be gone after game 162. Logically, he would be referring to players who would need to be removed this winter.
I did think it was a bad look. Waino was terrible for most of the season, but when it got to crunch time for getting his 200 he suddenly put together some good outings, and then his back hurt too much to take his last turn.
But the same could be said about Mikolas. He had seemingly run out of gas and was turning in some lackluster starts and not going deep. Then he suddenly gets rejuvenated and puts up two good starts at the end to get his 200 IP.
I have seen speculation that Arenado rubbed some the wrong way in that regard. He fought through physical issues a lot, but once it became clear he could not reach personal goals as to RBIs, or whatever, he packed it in. Maybe justified, not saying it isn’t, but a bad look.
So there might be some pattern of ‘bad looks’ from the veteran leader contingent.
I could see where Marmol, and perhaps his boss, could be frustrated by the seeming ability to take it up a notch to achieve a personal goal when the team did not get the benefit of any extra notches earlier.
Not sure if it was a serious suggestion, but Adam couldn’t have acted out on any selfishness without the explicit approval of the brain trust. Move on, he is/was not a target in Operation Weedout.
I thought it was more hypothetical, not a specific call out. Just a ‘we are going to focus on winning, not personal milestones and concerts.
The main reason that ’23 was such a disaster is that Mozeliak didn’t do last off season waht he plans on doing this year….. acquire starting pitching. We started the season with a rotation of Mikolas-Flaherty-Montgomery-Woodford-Matz. So many of us on TCN didn’t see that as a rotation that would win the NLC. And it was fairly obvious.
Mikolas was the only guy that lasted all season. Montgomery would have if he hadn’t been traded. Flaherty was very inconsistent and a far cry from being the #1 guy we thought, in the past, that he would be. Wood ford…. no reason to reiterate on his season. Matz was a large ? and although he had a great July and early Aug. his ’23 was plagued by injuries, something that was his reputation.When Woodford was replaced by Wainwright things got a whole lot worse. Outside of his final start Waino was mostly a disaster game in and game out.. There’s no question about that.
Mozeliak also hired a AAAA manager who doesn’t appear to be up to doing what it takes to win close games or to motivate his charges. A horrendous choice.
The plan B of having to replace injured starters didn’t work out at all. Mozeliak was perhaps overly confident that Memphis could provide starters that were ready to enter the rotation and pitch effectively. Wrong again.
We all know that DeWitt is a tightwad and that is a major factor but now he’ll have to part with some large coinage to right this ship or the team will fad into a less than mediocre bottom feeder.
All of this is something that could have been done last off-season and the calamitous version of 2023 might not of transpired. There’s a lot of lesser issues that added to the mess but Mozeliak’s sitting on his duff stands out far above any of them.
I disagree I think it was a very specific call out. He said they need to be “weeded” out. That’s specific he is telling them I know who you are.
There was more of an Adam focus than a team focus the later part of the season. But, for one thing, they needed to generate interest somehow. The goings on surrounding Albert and Yadi’s retirements after a first place finish, and carrying on over Albert’s 700 after a good personal performance, seems more OK than carrying on after a last place finish and a terrible personal season. Maybe it rubbed Ollie the same way as guys yucking it up in the dugout when the team is getting clobbered on the field. That Adam never seemed inclined to tap the breaks on any of it in light of circumstances might be telling somehow.
I’m just trying to throw possibilities out there. When a team goes from first to last with mostly the same cast of characters, there have to be reasons for that. We don’t know what the reasons are, so we should be looking at everything, without having to tip toe around sacred cows.
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