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They replace Marmol with a cardboard cutout of Red Schoendienst and add 15 wins without a single trade or free agent signing.
You mean the same Marmol that was manager of the 93 win Cardinals in 2022?
I would like to know the baseball team that finished last one season and then suddenly with the same guys finished first the next season.
The 2012 Red Sox finished last then the 2013 Red Sox beat the Cardinals in the World Series.
The 2015 Red Sox finished last then the 2016 Red Sox won the AL East.
I haven’t done a deep dive on the roster differences but it does illustrate that going from worst to first is not unheard of.
I am in the unfamiliar position of being more optimistic than almost everyone else.
Bling, since today is the last day of the year I may have to nominate the above sentence as one of the most humorous lines of 2023.
And I very much agree with your reasoning as to why the same roster core could be bad in 2023 but much better in 2024. I am not completely against stats and metrics but I firmly believe that computers are limited in their predictive abilities.
You mean the same Marmol that was manager of the 93 win Cardinals in 2022?
I look at something like that, and I also consider we didn’t do any better with Montgomery than without him, and I become very suspicious that the 2023 debacle was not as much about the skill level of the personnel as people think.
My candid assessment of Marmol is that he really isn’t a difference make either way. He most likely wasn’t the reason we won 93 games in 20222 and he most likely wasn’t the reason we lost 91 games in 2023.
We didn’t have the same seasoned leadership in 2023 (Skip, Maddux, Yadi, Albert,) and the rotation was abnormally horrible. Add to that some of the position players just had down years.
Can the script be flipped in 2024? Maybe so. I think the rotation will be more stable and maybe Goldy and Arenado will rebound, but I really don’t know if we have address the leadership vacuum.
You mean the same Marmol that was manager of the 93 win Cardinals in 2022?
Marmol is sort of a punching bag around here, especially since the team tanked so badly last year. If Marmol can just avoid the catastrophic errors he made with O’Neill and Contreras that alone will add numerous wins to our total this year.
The problem we face is that very few guys have upside, and many have possible downside (injury, bad year, normal skill decline with age, etc.)
MLB.com is touting Jordan Walker as the Cardinal most likely to have a breakout year in 2024. https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-players-poised-to-break-out-in-2024 “Walker is too physically gifted to not make enormous strides in Year 2. The guess here: 25 homers and 75 RBIs. — John Denton”
There are two problems with that. One is he is not likely to have a breakout year with his defense, which has been discussed here a lot.
The second problem is that the way you move up in the standings, without a big market payroll, is to have a starting pitcher have a breakout year.My candid assessment of Marmol is that he really isn’t a difference make either way.
My sense is that in the system envisioned by Mo none of the coaching staff are difference makers. They all have a defined and narrow lane implementing that part of the system which they are responsible for inplementing. Descalso, for example, could not possibly fulfill the customarily role we think of the bench coach filling. In Mo’s system, it must be a role for which coaching experience is not necessary.
1tough, what causes you to think that?
If that is true and the front office knows it, they should have fired him. If that is true and the FO doesn’t know it, you must have some real good player access.
The Cardinals have bent over backwards to honor their on the field legacy guys. If MO only has 2 more years, is this team, as constructed, really how they roll his next to last year? They have to add something else, right? Otherwise, just rebuild.
I think it’s the case simply because it’s inherently difficult for most people to respect or trust someone who not only refuses to acknowledge their own mistakes or shortcomings, but also seems to have a clear tendency to publicly assign or deflect blame in the direction of others. I don’t think that sort of trait comes close to establishing what could be termed respect or trust, and I don’t feel access to any of the players is needed to form that view.
gscottar
My candid assessment of Marmol is that he really isn’t a difference make either way. He most likely wasn’t the reason we won 93 games in 20222 and he most likely wasn’t the reason we lost 91 games in 2023.
I personally think this is true about all managers. They don’t do much and what they do would usually be the same as any other manager.
The team is affected by Marmol differently than the outside observer. It is clear that Marmol has both positive and negative characteristics. Some people can get beyond his smug, arrogant attitude he occasionally displays because those individuals have developed a relationship with him over time. Many of those people don’t even watch his post-game pressers and are completely unaffected by his antics.
I’m looking at the winter’s moves as we improved by picking up Gray. The rest is trying to compensate for failures. The development system should be able to provide bottom of rotation starters and 7th inning guys, so we’re just running in place with the rest. We’ve got veterans making a lot of money, using a roster slot on Carp for veteran presence is just making up for failure there. Bloom is clearly Mo trying to compensate for the failures in the area of talent evaluation. The bench coach shuffle I am sure represents another failure but I’m not sure what.
I’m still not sure how much ‘veteran presence’ from a player with Carpenter’s recent professional history brings to the club. I think Mo brought him in to sell tickets. If Carpenter sells 15,000 tickets out of a possible 3 million, it’s a break even. And he could sell a lot more than that. Carpenter could bring in an extra $5M-$10M in revenue, IMHO. There are a lot of fans that have fond memories of him.
This is truly going to be interesting. First, Lance Lynn could surprise. After he was traded to the Dodgers last season, his ERA dropped by over 2 runs. He’s going to be really motivated coming back “home” to the team he started with and pitching in the same rotation with Gray. Both are genuine bulldogs. They’ll play off each other. And a lot of folks don’t realize how many starts guys like Rom, Libby, Thompson, Woodford, etc. got last year. Only one starter on the entire staff started nore than 21 games for the Cards. One other thing that isn’t publicized is that Gibson had almost as many quality starts as Gray last season.
Now, if Kittredge and Robertson can come through to help Helsley, Gallegos, Romero, et al, we’re going to have a pretty interesting season.
I think it will be interesting too. I’m ok with the pitching staff and starting position players. The two things I worry about are injuries and intangibles.
Just my thoughts on Marmol and this could be way off:
I think the thing with O’Neal last year when Marmol called him out publicly on April 5, 2023 (5th game of the season) wasn’t a real smart thing to do that early in the season and it seemed like the team went in the tank right after that and never recovered. (They went 9 wins and 21 losses in their next 30 games after that)
The question is did he lose the locker room at that point and if he did can he recover, they didn’t recover last year so can he do it this year, b/c if not; he probably will be looking for work somewhere else either during or after this season
I think the O’Neal incident was only an early indication that the Cardinal manager was sorely lacking in the area of sound judgement. It also demonstrated a propensity to react without taking into consideration how the reaction would subsequently effect the overall mindset of his players regarding how they perceived the integrity and character of their manager. I don’t think he lost the respect of his players at that juncture, but it was the first of countless events that clearly illustrated that he was not only none too swift, but also not at all too trustworthy.
Carpenter was one of my favorite Cardinals for a long time, until he finally ran out of gas. But if the real reason for bringing him back is to sell more tickets I’m afraid they are going to be disappointed. I for one can’t imagine laying out the exorbitant price of a Cardinal ticket just to watch Matt Carpenter play.
Carpenter as the starting first baseman, when Goldy DH’s 20 games, would be brutally bad. His glove is too weak. He whiffs on anything hard, especially 90mph+ fastballs, on pickoff throws.
Burleson, Donovan and Baker started 29 games at 1B last season. Is that your succession plan if Goldy signs elsewhere as a FA?
Gorman is my succession plan, so Donnie at 2B, when Paul is at DH. It’s just a month of GS in 2024, but it’s also a year of 1B exposure in two different ST’s, before 2025 opening day for Gorman.
I’d make it crystal clear Gorman is the backup 1B, and give Paul the opportunity to help with that succession plan, by training his 1B footwork and positioning. If Paul walks, we are prepared, and Paul understands this. This could be “leadership” too.
Burleson, Baker and Carpenter are long odds to make the 2025 roster. Paul is a coin flip. Donovan has four seasons before free agency, and Gorman five. Focus on the long term assets, like a rebuilding org should.
I think Walker will end up at 1B. Whether that would happen at the deadline or even for 2025 I don’t know. But at some point.
I am not sure that Gorman isn’t a poorer second baseman than Walker a right fielder. And there are a lot of second base candidates without Gorman in the mix, but his bat is so important he needs to play. So I tend to agree with jj.
I think those who have already assumed Walker cannot cut it in the OF are jumping to conclusions. He has been working on it all winter with Oquendo so let’s see if there is improvement before making pronouncements. Only time will tell.
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