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While I am not big on Ollie’s “Xs & Os” management, from the little I have seen our club play live I am impressed. They look prepared and hustle. My sense is the guys like to play for him, FWIW.
We know Bob Reed has shared on here that he is really down on Ollie, and there are comments about how much can any manager do with no big offensive stud anchoring the lineup. All good, intelligent thoughts.
At one time I wanted a change, and I think there are better managers out there. But I am okay if we stick with Marmol next year. It looks like we will be in transition for the next couple of years, so expectations will be low. And he got the extension so may as well save the money. Seems like the club needs every dollar it can scrounge up to shore up the development system.
Skip might end up in our division as the Reds’ manager.
The question is…..will Sunday’s game be Marmol’s last game as the St. Louis manager.
Unfortunately, my guess is no.
I dont know if skip is a good manager but i think hes competent enough that the reds will leap frog us next year and i expect the cubs to stay ahead of us, both largely because of their managers. The reds are an organization that has floundered as well, longer than the cardinals, but hiring skip i think would be a step in the right direction.
It is how much of the problem is DeWitt?, Mo?, or all of the above.
Mo has a poor record in almost every phase of the game, free agents, trades, international. I have always questioned the major league level scouts.
The international program is a disaster. Luhnow had it turned around. I did a study in mid September. Current Latin sourced player who have played this season. Cardinals were 13th in number signed, 5th in career WAR of those signed (86.0) and 27th in career WAR currently in the organization (6.4). There is no longer an excuse. Everyone is working with a cap. The Cardinals have been going for quantity over quality and signing a lot of older prospects. Everyone wailed over the big spending year but that is one of the few recent years of success. The whole system has to be reworked.
Mo has had some spotty success with both free agent signings and trades but not nearly enough. Too many of what I term as “Mo’s Misfits”. Players who were once succesful, aging and coming off a bad year. Hope for rebound. Not very often. I often wonder how much room he gives his subordinates to operate.
I am not for keeping Ollie. His lineup decisions are a puzzle and very few can count on a consistent role. He is far too platoon oriented. For example he has on some occasions pinch hit for a hitter early in the game only to have the rejplacement having to face a same side pitcher in crunch time. He seems to like to give young player a chance but is also very impatient with them and some are sent to Memphis at the first sign of difficulty. He removes too many pitchers in the middle of an inning for platoon reasons only to have the replacement pitcher get torched. In a number of occasions resulting in the pitcher being pulled is stuck with a loss or even loses a win. Not good for the club house. A bad clubhouse usually results in uninspired play. With the sweetheart press coverage in St. Louis it is hard to measure the atmosphere in Ollie’s clubhouse. I also don’t like his use of green pitchers in late innings when we are a run or two behind.. It is like he has given up on the game.
Finallly he has no sense of roles. Players want to understand their role on the team and be able to count on it. Not in Ollie’s clubhouse.
My dilema is Flores. He has had some good drafts but has been spotty and I think his drafts after 2020 have not been productive.
The Cardinals have a history of finding diamonds in the rough but I fear those days are gone forever. There will be exceptions but fewer with current technology measuring so many things like spin rate on breaking pitches, movement on pitches, bat speed, etc. I don’t think in todays world the Cardinal would have picked up Kieth Hernandez in the 42nd round. If there was a 42nd round. The whole scouting system may need to be modernized.
My advice is find a manager not obsessed with daily mix and match tinkering. Sign players good at their positions and play them every day (How can one learn to hit lefties if he never gets to bat against lefties?). Give a player a job and let him do it. If he can’t, get rid of him. It’s always handy to have a good utility player around for special cases, of course, but forget platooning. Think consistency.
CiF’s comment just above is indeed exactly how it should be done. But that is not what the Cardinals appear to do, based upon my perception from following the team 162 games, year after year.
It is pretty impossible to explain, but I have been beating the drum for some years now, usually drawing ire, but I will try again. The idea that the output of the analytics dept informs game planning and in-game decisions is probably universal in the game today. But the Cardinals seem like they think anaytics is a religion to which cult like adherence is demanded rather than being a tool for knowledgeable baseball people to use to help them accomplish the objectives they perceive as beneficial. In that scenario, knowledgeable baseball people who bring ideas to the table are a hindrance and a threat, as they would tend to veer from the algo generated optimums based upon various intangible factors that their years of experience and observation of the game and players have taught them to value. Having an algo generate all the statistical advantages and then try to cram as many onto the field as you can works in simulations, but brick and mortar players are men not spreadsheets. Based upon observation of how the roster is managed day to day, that is what I think the underlying problem is, as far as the ML team and the individuals underperforming.
I also would think something similar pervades the player development system all through the organization. The notion that a biomechanicaly optimized swing is not great for fouling off something too close to take with two strikes is not factored in at all, for example, as far as I can tell. If the focus of your development has been identifying that optimized swing, learning it, and making it repeatable, then when you get to MLB, that is your one and only swing. It is repeatable for you, but obviously, it is repeatable for the opposition, too, and they will figure a way around it. You can forget about situational hitting if all you can do is your optimized swing. And then there is the awkward truth that if a player is not pretty good at a defensive position, it does not matter how reliably he can launch one with the perfect angle and exit velo, because he will be on the bench half the time, while the manager and optimized lineup algo try to cycle a bunch of guys through the lineup. Instead of using the DH slot to extend the career of a proven professional hitter, you are using it to get reps for guys who show up from AAA with limited playability.
The Cardinals have not developed power bats for a very long time. Too long for it to be bad luck. Too long for it to be due to a relatively recent shift in resouces. They are doing something wrong.
The Cardinals have not had much luck developing starting pitchers either. I have stated my view on that previously, also drawing ire, but I will try again. The Cardinals home in on guys who seemingly popped out of the womb with whiffleball stuff, and then try to somehow teach physical durability or coax it by slow walking or curating load, or whatever they think they are doing. The recent phenomina of having a bunch of pitchers with great stuff but lacking the necessary durability cluster at the top of the prospect list is exemplary. They think they have help coming but it is an illusion. It is make believe. Whenever these guys manage to be healthy enough to play, the durable guys are again shoved to the curb. Instead, they need to identify the durable guys, and prioritize them. It is the job of player development to help them become more effective. We do not do that, and end up with nothing once all the tea cups are broken and swept into the bin.
Bling, I appreciate that you are married to your take. If you had simply said, “The Cards are using the wrong analytics,” I would have agreed with you. Yet by continuing to beat the drum that all analytics are bad, you’ve once again neglected that the Cards are not fonsid anywhere near the most analytical teams. The Dodgers, Yankees and Rays top that list…and they seem to be doing pretty fine for the most part. Basically every team ahead of us in staffers is doing better than we are and the teams with fewer are generally worse. What does that tell you?
BHC, I guess the Skip love is derived from him being a TLR disciple and him winning NL Manager of the Year in 2023 with a terrible organization.
But it doesn’t feel like the timing is right for him to join the Cardinals right now. Apparently they are going to keep Marmol since they know we aren’t going to be winning the next couple of years anyway. Might as well let Ollie manage through the rebuild and hire a better manager for the 2027 season.
Even if they bring Ollie and Blake back surely they will replace the hitting coaches right? There is zero justification for bringing those guys back rebuild or not.
They are not observations. They are very specific suppositions about operational details that NO outsider could ever know.
“If I present my assumptions really forcefully, loudly and repeatedly, they must be true.”
Let the payroll cutting begin.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/09/report-cardinals-open-to-offers-on-sonny-gray.htmlWell cutting loose of gray would be hard but it is doable. Though in hindsight what was ever the point. I guess they was just dreaming of a playoff run. Kind of silly based on what they had. They actually did better than most sites projected but expecting more than that was foolhardy at best.
1982willie said:
They actually did better than most sites projected but expecting more than that was foolhardy at best.
Not sure which sites you are talking about, but that isn’t what I recall. From the pre-season:
Fangraphs 83 wins
Betonline.ag 84 1/2 wins
PECOTA 85 1/2 winsActual will be 82 or 83 depending on today’s finale.
If you had simply said, “The Cards are using the wrong analytics,” I would have agreed with you.
It should be known by now that I do not throw out the catch phrase that can mean anything or nothing and then leave it at that. I don’t think it adds anything useful to a conversation. People can easily have an opinion about what I say because I try to make it unequivocal. I don’t expect agreement, just lively debate.
I also want to acknowledge Katie Woo for having the brass to write that article. Most of the STL media wouldn’t have touched that with a 10 foot pole. Is it 100% accurate? I have no way of knowing but I suspect a lot of it is. Good for her although she has probably been removed from Mo’s Christmas Card list.
The St. Louis Cardinals are expected to part ways with seven-time All-Star Paul Goldschmidt at the end of the season, multiple league sources tell The Athletic. He will be an unrestricted free agent.
Story here:https://t.co/aCTLeX64Yl
— Katie Woo (@katiejwoo) September 29, 2024
Well brian i dont know where i got that they finished better than projections. Seems like those you mentioned were pretty close. They finished better than my projections i know. Cause i had them maybe 75 wins. I wasnt expecting lynn to hold up as long as he did and overall he wasnt bad. I wasnt sure about gibson and he turned out fine. Not great, just fine.I almost wished they had finished with 75 wins. Then there would be none of this well we finished over 500 nonsense that gets spewed around. That kind of talk is fine for the pirates, reds, or cubs. But the cardinals should always outside of say an unusual season like 2006, expect to do better than that just around 500. Now in the long past we have had down years but you often felt we were just a player or two away from really competing next year. Its called optimism. Right now this team doesnt have any of that. Hopefully it gets fixed.
When the Cards are willing to give up the HoF hat and possibly the red jacket too, you know that there is going to be some serious belt tightening.
The Cardinals have a press conference planned for 2 pm CST on Monday at Busch Stadium to discuss plans for 2025 and beyond. #STLCards
— Katie Woo (@katiejwoo) September 29, 2024
If this is Bloom taking over and what he’s doing I love him already! Shed the contracts, get Mo and Girsh and any of their boot lickers out of there, get rid of the staff and START OVER. Also, unlike the Cardinals of the past for front office information to be leaked. Makes me think some people on the inside know they are out and are talking.
I’m not an Oli hater, but I’m not a fan either. I didn’t like the undeserved extension at the start of the year. They messed up not giving it to Skip when they had the chance. I am a Blake and Ward hater.
I said last year at the deadline I would have totally torn it down and not just the “soft reset”. The return for Gray and Arenado won’t be great with the contracts and age, but there will be suitors.FA: Goldschmidt, Carpenter, Middleton, Lynn, Gibson, Kittredge
DFA: Fermin, Roycroft?, Loutos?, O’Brien?
TRADE: Arenado (3 yrs 64), Gray (2 yrs 65*), Contreras (3 yrs 85*), Helsley(final arb year), Fedde (1 yr 7.5)
* – guaranteed money with buy out of option year1. Donovan 2B (L)
2. Winn SS (R)
3. Nootbaar LF (L)
4. ??? DH/1B/RF (R)
5. Burleson 1B (L) (DH?)
6. Walker RF (R) (DH?/1B???)
7. Gorman 3B (L)
8. Herrera/ Pages C (R)
9. Siani/ Scott CF (L)Saggese IF (R)
Baker 1B/DH (R) ?
Scott/ Siani OF (L)
Pages/ Herrera C (R)Mikolas (1 yr 18.5)
Matz (L) (1yr 12.5)
Pallante
Liberatore (L)
McGreevyThompson(L)/Kloffenstein/Graceffo/???
O’Brien/Roycroft/???
Leahy
King (L)
????
Romero (L)
????
FernandezLiberatore still only 25, if you’re blowing it up give him a chance to figure it out as a SP. If he doesn’t he’s shown he’s above average RP and can replace King in the pen and use a different SP.
If Arenado and Goldschmidt had hit as they should have, and if Gorman and Walker had hit as anticipated, the comments on this thread would be much different. I’m not blaming the organization. The only one who explained why he couldn’t hit any more was Arenado. He said it was because the pitchers had gotten so much better.
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