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I’ve been a Cardinal fan for over 70 years. This team literally makes me sick. I cannot comprehend how Mo can live with himself and not resign. Like most of us, I’ve learned to accept the many things in this world that I have no control over. Somehow this feels different to me. I cannot imagine a single Cardinal fan thinking that this man should be in control of our team. I’m not into venting or complaining. We should all work together to accomplish this goal. For example, I have watched every Cardinal game on MLB TV for years. I’m ready to demand a full refund and never watch a game until he resigns. Busch Stadium should be empty.
Hello SHSAM. Plenty of long time fans around here.
The ray of hope I see is that at long last fans, bloggers and sports media are moving away from obsessing over the payroll to the exclusion of all else. It has always been the universal complaint that payroll is not high enough, and if it was, things would be better. Those of us arguing anything else have been a voice in the forest with no one listening. There seems to now be an increasing acceptance that the system in place is not working and the entire organization is disfunctional top to bottom. That being the case, dumping more money into the ML payroll is not going to solve the problem. They simply cannot buy an entire team, rotation, pen, middle of the order, catcher, bench, depth and reserves, all of it, and do it year after year. So far though, incredibly, there is no indication that ownership recognizes that state of affairs.
That Redbird Rants article is a good one and dives a little deeper into most of what we say on here, and the general thoughts on the Cardinal management. One key point is that they sink a lot of money into medicore talent, and have given out extensions to unproven or declining players, not too mention the odd extension given to the manager after the worst season since 1990.
I will also add that the organization seems to have this view that players should be of a certain type, and will trade guys when they do not fit the model. That one is hard to characterize and is more my opinion than anything, but it seems like guys like Tommy Pham, Randy Arozarena, Adolis Garcia, Jack Flaherty, Tyler O’Neill, etc were a little too rogue or there was something about them that was less than the “all-American boy” quality they seem to desire, and the Cardinals sent them away.
Another point not mentioned that fits this pattern of decisions not based on sound baseball logic was the firing of Shidlt. Again, he did not fit their mold despite being a good manager here.
And finally, I keep saying this, but management has not been realistic in the last year. They keep throwing out non-baseball excuses as to why they have not won; things like “lack of clubhouse leaderships” and Marmol’s nonsense about “We need to get rid of the guys that do not want to win”, or whatever that was.
Just be honest with your organization and results, don’t try to justify your failures due to other people’s supposed lack of character.
At any rate, the only question that remains is when management will change, not if. How much longer does Mo stick around? How about Marmol?
I think Marmol’s days are numbered and he won’t make it past Memorial Day. Mo will probably stay for the season and resign this Fall.
You have to fit the model of The Cardinal Way. The Cardinals are a boring team without much energy. I’m surprised we signed Contreras because he doesn’t fit that mold and actually plays the game with energy and like he cares. We always want the stoic players like Goldy. I think it would really help the team to have more energetic players and to not pressure players into becoming boring.
#STLCards President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak, who isn’t with the team this weekend in Milwaukee, but is expected to join the club in Southern California, on manager Oliver Marmol to KMOX this morning: pic.twitter.com/Ab32axteCL
— John Denton (@JohnDenton555) May 12, 2024
BlackHillsCard: Amen to that. If you are a college AD, you generally get two shots at a coach of the schools major sport (basketball school or football school). More if your a smaller school and have your coaches poached by larger schools.
I would say Mo shouldn’t have gotten a third shot, but Schildt obviously didn’t bow down to the spreadsheet guys, so they fired a winning manager, dumb. If they let him fire Oli, your just going to get another Mo yes man.
Former NY Post writer Kevin Kernan (who is as anti-nerds as bling), thinks the answer to fix the Cardinals is to hire Joe Maddon as manager. I don’t think he aimed high enough, but it is an interesting take.
How a forever proud organization went into the tank @Cardinals @Mlb https://t.co/3RZSMS1OzA
— Kevin Kernan (@AMBS_Kernan) May 13, 2024
I am not sure about Madden but he is right about a lot of things.
1) The nerds have apparently taken over, the obsession with platooning, the knee jerk reactions. They have no clue how to build a ball team and how to keep player focused on playing the game. Many of them have to be constantly looking over their shoulder worrying about what Ollie is going to do next.
2) The going quantity rather than quality in the International program. They have spending limits in place which should allow them to compete with anyone for talent. They keep looking for the diamond in the rough and with the tools available to evaluate talent now those days are almost over that you will find a phenom that everybody has missed. The few good international prospects we have signed have largely been dealt off with little in return.
3) Field management- strictly amateurs. Inside the box thinking. Ollie is not qualified to be a major league manager and Mo not only brings him back but gives him a two year extension. Poor decision after poor decision.
– Good thing he was out of the game yesterday. He has the habit of using other than the best relief pitcher late in close games. Sometimes it works for him but often ends up being further behind late. Yesterday whoever was running the team used our best relief pitchers even though trailing in the late innins and viola a walk off win. Using a struggling Gallegos in the 8th inning of a close game is a perfect example of how clueless Ollie is about use of him bullpen.
– Resting multiple regulars to the extent we have regulars. Winn is leading all baseball in defensive WAR for defensive shortstops and has hit well but he has not started in a least 6 games. I think Ollie is trying to satisfy everyone and satisfying no one.
– Lineups- Putting high strikeout guys in the 2 and 3 holes is a recipe for low scoring. Batting the speedy Winn 7th and usually 8th in the lineup takes away his value. He should be second or ninth. Too much platooning.
– Impatience with young players. Doesn’t use them for days and when they fail it is off to the minors.We need a new General Manager and a Manager with a good track record who will bring in a new staff
We probably need to take a hard look at major league scouting. Too many bad pickups. Too many aging players who are coming off a down year and eternal hope that they will turn it around.
The international program needs to be totally revamped with a different approach and possiby a vast change in personel. We do not hava an international player in the system that we have more than a hope that they will be a solid major league player much less a star.
I think Flores is doing a pretty good job in the draft but the drastic switch from pitching to hitting has not paid off that well. At one time his draftees had one of the highest collective WAR in the game but I haven’t checked lately Picking late had to hurt with the emergence of better evaluation tools but that is unlikely to be a problem in the future.
I am 89 years old and am facing the bleak prospect that I will never see an outstanding Cardinal team again.
I respect Joe Maddon but he is 70 years old. That doesn’t seem like a good long term plan unless they view him as a bridge to someone else a few years from now.
ZTR, thanks for sharing the article from Redbird Rants. It was well written.
Maddon could not work within the system Mo has in place. Neither could Albert and Maddux, IMO. (Nor Holliday) You can’t fix the system by changing the manager.
The problem is not just at the ML level, with how the ML team is managed at the field manager level. It would not help to change out all the field managers all the way down. I agree the ML coaching staff is not what a successful team needs, but I am saying changing them out within the existing system is a waste of time.
I’m trying to keep calm. It will change when MO is gone and not one minute before. Be cool. Like Fonzie.
Good stuff Sooner. Well thought out and you bring up a lot of things that we see, but management either has a different view, or thinks the last year and a quarter is just a blip in the radar, and things will be better.
I’m not smart enough to know what it’s going to take to change the fortunes of my favorite team, but whether or not this fiasco is just a blip on the radar, I can’t ever recall two successive Cardinal seasons in which any hope of having a chance in September was extinguished as early as the middle portion of May. This season is real close to being a carbon copy of ’23. I’ve lived through some bad Cardinal teams, but at least they pretended to be competitive until around the early part of June or later.
Here is an interesting observation about the offense.
Cardinals have the 2nd highest average swing length (more pull ideally) but are near the bottom in pulled flyballs.
Have to wonder where the disconnect is approach-wise. Should they be pulling more or should the swings be shorter? https://t.co/zksMZc71HS
— nate schwartz (@_nateschwartz) May 13, 2024
I am 100% certain that it is not news to the Cardinals. There would be a guy whose job it is to track all that and produce a visual aide like that. He should be dropped over the side chained to his computer. It takes a fastball 0.4 seconds to get there. Which means a short hack is better than a long swoosh. Everybody already know that. You don’t need a data set and a visual aide. Deluging guys with all this BS is not helping anything. They get more messed up the longer they are exposed to it.
Probably what it is is a long swing works best for launching minor league fast balls into orbit so then everyone can crow about Walker’s exit velocity, or Gormans, or whoever. Much is made of the guys with the highest average exit velocity. Nothing is made of situational hitting ability, and whether a guy can put the ball in play when a runner is on second. And then you suck with RISP, but the wonks can’t make the connection that all anybody cares about is launching it, so maybe put down the radar guns and worry about something else.
It’s funny to me seeing the anti analytics people while the Dodgers and Astros built their rosters using analytics
BHC, the Cardinals did too before the people who knew what they were doing left town. Analytics is a tool like a hammer. It can drive nails or mash thumbs. And in my opinion, analytics is not the sort of thing where more is better. It is not the sort of thing where a tech based initiative should be embraced just because it can be, that numbers must be put to use just because they can be generated. The Cardinals problem is not analytics, it is analytics saturation to the exclusion of all else. And no, I do not have inside knowledge, if anyone was wondering.
In other words, “I think the problem is analytics saturation to the exclusion of all else, but I really have no idea. But if I say it really confidently, it must be so!” 😉
BenFred must have thought Mo wasn’t on the hot seat already…
BenFred: Did Cardinals exec John Mozeliak put himself on the hot seat? Sounds like it. https://t.co/d0y5cluntP
— STL Pinch Hits (@STLPinchHits) May 14, 2024
Yeah, I would think the Cardinals have people who know that whole “long swing” thing, and not getting much from it. Not being schooled in that stuff it sounds like the issue is the Cardinals swing and miss more than most teams. A long stroke would seem to lead to more swings and misses.
That was one thing I liked about Ty O’Neill – he had that short, powerful swing.
But anyway, sounds like the answer is to shorten the swing and increase contact.
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