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Hopefully Bloom is smart enough not to start off on the wrong foot by inviting intense blowback and infuriating a sizable chunk of the fan base. Few will object to replacing Marmol, and few will expect an instant turn around, unless the messaging is bungled.
This is something I have repeated many times over the years. The manager gets far too much credit when things are going well and takes far too much blame when not.
Plain and simple, the Cardinals need better players. A staff change (because it wouldn’t be just the manager) will not improve the Cardinals on the field enough to matter. And to those who believe such a change will energize disinterested fans, it wouldn’t fool them very long.
Unless there are massive ‘philosophical differences’ between Bloom and Marmol OR there are massive roster upgrades coming in 2026 with proven veterans – I think Marmol stays his last year to manage a mediocre roster to another mediocre finish THEN the new guy come in for 2027 to (hopefully) start the climb back to being a relevant team in the field.
Brian wrote:
This is something I have repeated many times over the years. The manager gets far too much credit when things are going well and takes far too much blame when not.
Plain and simple, the Cardinals need better players. A staff change (because it wouldn’t be just the manager) will not improve the Cardinals on the field enough to matter. And to those who believe such a change will energize disinterested fans, it wouldn’t fool them very long.
This is exactly what I have ben trying to say.
ZTR said:
Unless there are massive ‘philosophical differences’ between Bloom and Marmol OR there are massive roster upgrades coming in 2026 with proven veterans – I think Marmol stays his last year to manage a mediocre roster to another mediocre finish THEN the new guy come in for 2027 to (hopefully) start the climb back to being a relevant team in the field.
This is my predicted outcome as well.
Marmol is the side show. If Bill doesn’t free the budget, CB and his managers impact is limited to weeding thru our own.
Poor Bill.Such wonderfully astute baseball minds, far greater than my own, thinking Marmol will be back. Why can’t they see that he’s as good as gone? That’ll remain a mystery for me for quite some time to come.
Maybe Marmol can set the record for manager ejections in a season in 2026. At least that would be entertaining.
“The Major League Baseball record for manager ejections in a single season is 11, a mark achieved by four managers: John McGraw (1905, 1906), Bill Dahlen (1910), Paul Richards (1952), and Bobby Cox (2001).”
I guarantee you that I’ve had more erections than that in a single season! Front Row Amy notwithstanding!
r/Esteemed Rat
Once things are in the books on Ollie’s Cardinal manager’s tenure, I wonder where he will rank? Right now he is down there aways, maybe ahead of only Vern Rapp and Solly Hemus.
Hemus was before my time, but his W/L record is 2 under even. Rapp is 1 under even and I clearly remember enduring his short stint as the Cardinal manager. The whiz kid is currently 3 over even with 12 to play this season. I’m going by simple numbers so he currently doesn’t fall below Hemus and Rapp, but I’ve come to dislike him more than I ever recall my dislike of Rapp and he was a lousy leader.
Sorry brian i respect your opinions but i disagree. If what you are saying is true, then just have the owners grandkids suit up and run the team. But ive seen great managers come through and take the same players the other guy had and do good things. Sure they brought in some new guys but every season should be some new players regardless to a point. Heck if you guys like what you see from the team and the coach in the clubhouse, then give marmol a lifetime contract cause he will gladly stay for peanuts cause nobody else is going to hire him to be a manager and apparently according to you it doesnt matter. I think some of us know better.
Now you can do what the yankees did and get so much talent that they overcome the manager. But do you really think the cardinals are going to do that. I dont think so. So so they better get an actual leader who can coach, mentor, and bring out the best in players that arent future hall of famers.
I happen to feel that the role of a manger is crucial to the success of a baseball team, but whether he is or not, one thing is entirely certain…When a team fails, he’s the first to bear the burden of that team’s failure. Whether or not it’s fair doesn’t matter. It’s simply the reality of how it’s always been and anyone hired to manage a Big League baseball team knows that’s the case. When a team consistently fails, the guy on the top step is the first casualty in a process of attrition.
Yeah, Cox would lose it sometimes if his future Hall of Famers weren’t getting the calls 4 inches off the plate. I guess with Weaver, Martin and Durocher it was more about the quality of the ejections that we remember rather than the quantity.
I think you have to look at the different facets of managerial impact on a ball club. If you look at it just from a tactical, in-game decision-making standpoint, then yes it may not matter that much. I think that’s where the old saying applies about managers deciding only a few games each season.
If you talk about leadership, then the impact is much greater. Players can quit on a manager and that means a ton over the course of 162 games to the downside. On the other hand, some managers can inspire players to figuratively run through brick walls and that can mean much more than a few games to the upside.
Amen, Euro…Leadership is paramount and, in my view, overrides all other areas of a manager’s many tasks. You have to have the ability to get the fellas to go out there a grind it out every inning of every game over the course of a long and arduous season. Not at all an easy task, but the good ones are masters in that vital area of managing a baseball team.
Euro what you are saying is true but I don’t know how any fan could objectively know if that applies to this situation or not. How would anyone on the outside know if the players have truly quit? Reading body language? That seems very subjective. It could be that these players just aren’t good enough.
Cardinal starting pitchers this year on regular rest: 3.91 ERA
With one extra day of rest: 4.90 ERA
Two or more extra days: 5.52 ERAThis pattern has been true for at least a couple of months now.
And yet, only 38 starts (25% of Cardinal starts) have been made with regular rest.And that’s Marmol in a nutshell, really. He does things that logically seem like they should work (extra rest for starting pitchers, Brendan Donovan batting leadoff, etc.), but when it turns out that they do NOT work, he keeps doing them anyway — a well-known definition of insanity.
Last winter I stated that Cincy, Pitt, and Colorado had the only managers for whom I definitely would not trade Ollie Marmol. Well, Bell, Black, and Shelton have all been fired since then.
Can anyone here name three current managers (with at least two years of MLB track record) they feel are worse than Marmol? I can no longer name even one.
If Marmol and Blake are making those rotation decisions completely by themselves then that would appear to be a negative mark although in modern baseball I think assuming that all of the on the field decisions come from the dugout is a stretch. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of “suggestions” that come from the wonk squad upstairs.
As for worse managers that would be hard for me to know since I don’t watch a lot of other teams on a regular basis. By scanning the standings I see there are 11 teams in MLB currently with a worse record than the Cardinals so I suppose some of those managers are subpar or have even worse rosters.
Another name that pops to mind is Carlos Mendoza of the Mets. The Mets have won a grand total of 4 more games than the Cardinals despite having a 40 man payroll of $337M. Not impressive.
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