- This topic has 999 replies, 39 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 7 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Matheny isnt going anywhere this offseason…sorry folks…when the Gms didnt give him anything at the trade deadline to help fix the issues and forced him to lpay youngsters that was basically afree pass on the results for this season
which…will still probably be top 10 level in the league despite everyone postings as if this team is terrible and in the gutter
Arent the Cards 2.5 out of the Wild Card? even with no help from management…even with a AAA roster some nights…even with 2 of the 5 starters from the beginning of the year not in the rotation and the first closer washed up or hurt and the second one gone to TJ?
If we arent going to blame the players for losses, and only blame the manager…then shouldnt we blaming ,or heaven forbid give him credit, the manager for all these wins with a AAA roster?
Show me the AAA roster that the Indians, Astros, LAD, Cubs, Nationals, Red Sox, DBacks are playing with…all those GREAT managers and their stacked lineups and major trade acquisitions have nothign to do with it right?
People bash the manager…then go in another thread and bash the players yet dont see a link…this team was supposed to be done after the first month…yet here they are with 1 week to go and STILL despite all the painful losses and poor play and bad decisions and angst from the fans…right in the mix for the playoffs with meaningful games to be played all the way out
managers decisions matter, but players play and team make up matters too…we basically are playing a AAA team with a few MLBers sprinkled in for most of the 2nd half and we are still doing well… you start the season like that and expectations woudl be abysmal…yet with ours we are right there…
all people seem to want to do is BLAME someone…you can identify problems with players and coaches without firing people and DEFINITELY without NOT giving credit to what they have done that is good…living in such a binary way just isnt baseball…wins and losses are added up at the end of the season, but just because you come out sometimes in the red doesnt mean you didnt do good things along the way and that they cant be addressed
Check out the video on this copy and paste. It comes in the “ya just gotta laugh” category. There’s a lot of things happening on the field in the course of a season that can make a manager want to cry. Some of what’s shown is hard to stomach, some of it is down right amusing. Matheny is on at the end, walk a mile
in his cleats.The idea of a lackadaisical spring training bothers the heck out of me. I hate the sloppy defense and bad baserunning that comes out of that. For those reasons I am okay if they fire Matheny. The problem is ‘Who are they going to get that’s any better’? Stubby Clapp? Ollie Marmol? Who is going to better than what we have? I kind of think we should just stick with Matheny for awhile longer to see if he figures it out.
See if he figures it out? He’s had 6 years and still makes the same mistakes. He isn’t not going to get some “Aha” moment.
You only see about 1/10 of what a manager does during the course of a full year, BlackHills. So how can you judge?
Matheny apologists are so insufferable its amusing.
The amount of evidence that points to how bad Matheny is as manager is through the roof and yet the apologists refuse to see the daylight.
And that’s only like 1/100 of the evidence against him, but even then the apologists will ignore it and act like Matheny the best thing since sliced bread.
MM bashers should try grading on the curve. With this mish mash of
players, how are we still in the running for the playoffs? Waino?
Leake? Broxton? Siegrist? Oh?
Peralta? Diaz? Piscotty? Grichuk?
G. Garcia?bccran, do you consider the VEB report of Matheny’s pen management “bashing”? I see a detailed, analytical analysis that quantifies something that many had already felt via observation but did not have the data to support the feeling. That the conclusion probably makes you uncomfortable does not make it invalid.
As a side point, none of us have any idea how the manager and pitching coach interact during games, but unless Derek Lilliquist is just a “yes” man, he would (or at least should) have significant responsibility in how and when his pitchers are deployed. Yes, the bottom line decisions are the manager’s, but for example, do you think TLR made pitching moves without Duncan’s input? I highly doubt it.
On the other hand, if the manager does not accept his pitching coach’s input, it would suggest another problem entirely.
In sports, when a program is heading in the wrong direction, we often see coaching changes a year before the head coach/manager fully feels the heat. The Cardinals already had one highly unusual coaching purge in-season and rumors are that more coaching changes may be coming this off-season. That should buy Matheny at least another season to reverse the trend.
Pen management is only one aspect of the job. Take an honest look at this lineup after the underperformances and injuries and please explain how we are still in a playoff race. It defies logic.
You’re defense of Matheny defies logic. Advanced stats, observations, the eye test and more convincingly show Matheny is a poor manager and a poor in game manager and yet you will defend him.
BlackHills and Brian –
Winning percentages as a Cardinal
manager –Matheny – .562
Larussa – .544
Herzog – .530
Shoendienst – .522
Torre – .498
Rickey – .486And please, please don’t tell me that MM has had better players.
I liked that he pulled Carpenter when the Reds went with a lefty last night in favor of Harrison Bader, who crushes LH pitching.
Got one better than all of those, Cranny. The Rajah, .569 as Cardinal manager, including a World Series championship. Frank Frisch checks in at .564, and also has a World Series championship.
Or how about this guy, Johnny Keane, .560 and a World Championship. But then there is one guy who is out-of-sight. Billy Southworth, .641 with 3 pennants and two World Championships. Greatest era of Cardinal baseball ever.
Just for fun, my personal top five Cardinal managers of all time:
Billy Southworth
Tony LaRussa
Whitey Herzog
Johnny Keane
Red SchoendienstFrisch and Hornsby would be sixth and seventh, and you could almost put either guy in either spot. I would put Frisch sixth simply because he managed longer.
Fair enough, Mike. But if Matheny has a higher winning percentage, why are LaRussa, Herzog, and Schoendienst on your list of favorites above him? Just curious.
Good question. Answer is because all have World Championships and a longer tenure than Mike.
Obviously everyone will have their own criteria for rankings like this. When it comes to managers and teams all-time rankings, I put a fairly heavy weight on championships. Mike has the one pennant, so he has built a nice resume so far.
Just looking quick overall, I would probably put Eddie Dyer at 8 and Mike at 9, but would need to research guys like Miller Huggins and Fred Hutchinson a lot more to really say for sure. Dyer might even be under-rated at 8, as he had a .578 winning percentage for us in 5 seasons, and won a championship.
Neither Huggins nor Hutchinson won in St. Louis, but did well elsewhere and did not have the horses in St. Louis. Still, they probably would fall below Matheny in my list due to the 2013 pennant Matheny got us.
Bottom line, until you bring home the ring, you fall into the “Gene Mauch” group as “the best manager never to win it all”. At least that is how I view it.
Here’s another list –
Southworth .597
McGraw – .586
Lopez – .584
Weaver – .583
Johnson – .562
Matheny – .561
Alston – .558
Cox – .556
Girardi – .554
Martin – .553
Grimm – .547
Anderson – .545
Durocher – .540
Murtaugh – .540The tired line of winning percentage is amusing but Matheny apologists go to the old tried and true shtick. Matheny is a horrible tactician and I have provided you proof and evidence of that fact, you refuse to listen.
And I will bring up the fact that Matheny did inherit a championship team and rightfully took them to the NLCS and a WS within 3 years of taking the reigns. But we all know how those games played out when Matheny was out managed by more experienced managers. The fact is he has managed for 6 years and still makes the same mistakes and overworks guys in the bullpen.
Did MM inherit Pujols, BlackHills?
The core player on the team? Did he inherit Descalso at 2B and Jay in CF? Let’s drop the discussion about what a great team he inherited. This year, do you really think he was handed a playoff teM?
Peralta? Diaz? Grichuk? Piscotty?
Broxton? Etc?Mike –
Herzog finally won a WS in his 11th year of managing.
LaRussa finally won a WS in his 13th year of managing.
You have a great point about Southworth, but did it matter that his 2 WS wins were in 1942 and 1944?
As far as the Redhead, here are some of the players he won the WS with in his 3rd year of managing –
Brock
Cepeda
Shannon
McCarver
Flood
Maris
Gibson
CarletonCase made.
Regular season winning percentage is a questionable measure, but here is the winning percentage the last two years. Not impressive at all.
2016 .531 (missed playoffs)
2017 .526 (currently missing playoffs)When his winning percentage is good, he gets the credit. When the winning percentage fell and the team misses the playoffs, it is the players’ fault. Not a very credible argument to spin it both ways, IMO.
The reality is somewhere in the middle. The players have to play, but the evidence also mounts that the manager is not among the best in his profession.
Some great names on that all-time list. If I am not mistaken, I think only Lopez and Matheny are without championships on that list. Al Lopez managed during the Yankee dominance, and was the only guy to break their spell between 1949 and 1964, doing it with two different teams.
Mike is still building his career, so we will see how it plays out. There is no argument he has won, so that alone makes him intriguing when gauging successful managers. But there are legitimate questions surrounding his strategic moves. That 2014 playoff series against the Giants was brutal. Mike played right into the hands of the Bochy and the Giants with his blunders.
Still, I think he has gotten better. I loved the double steal call last night. That aggressiveness in an important game was the kind of things good managers do – push the opponent and increase the chance of them making a mistake.
Given the high level of expectations for the Cardinals, I really wonder if Matheny would last long enough to make it to his 11th or 13th year without winning a title. (That would be 2023 or 2025.) Maybe if the team could get on a positive trend by passing the Cubs instead of being lined up to finish second or third in the division for the foreseeable future?
What do others think?
He inherited Allen Craig who was still a good hitter in 2012 and he got Carlos Beltran who put very good numbers. I dont understand the Pujols reference as he was already dropping off in performance at this point. But he inherited a good team with good players and his gaffs during the playoffs costs this team a title in 2012, 2013, and 2014.
Everyone argued this team wasn’t good enough coming into the season but that still doesn’t explain Matheny’s record on bullpen management, leaving starters in games way too long and making mind boggling double switches that come back to haunt the team later in the game.
Sticking your head in the sand and making noise doesn’t change the fact Matheny is a poor tactician.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.