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For those posters on the side of sending Poncedeleon back out for the 8th, I have one name for you…
Bud Smith
cranny,
The board doesn’t have a PM feature, as you know. So the following goes here.
Your refusal to actually move on from Matheny’s firing is getting on my last nerve. As my now grown children can tell you, that is a very bad thing.
Other posters are allowed to dislike Matheny’s management style and want him gone without posting what a fine person he is. My father was the finest person I’ve ever known but that doesn’t mean I would want him managing the Cardinals.
As far as journalists go, having spent a decade in NYC and experiencing their newspaper writers, most Cardinals fans have little concept of what hard-hitting, in-your-face journalism actually is. I like how those covering the Cardinals do it and simply don’t read what I don’t choose to read. I certainly don’t expect them to change their coverage to suit me. The late Joe Strauss was way too snarky and superior for my tastes. Didn’t read him. I think Bernie is a human wind-sock and fancies himself as St Louis’ Mike Lupica. (He isn’t). Read him on occasion because I still think he raises some thought-provoking issues but mainly leave him alone.
As far as the article in The Athletic with the Matheny, Pham and Norris QUOTES in it goes, Goold stated in his Q&A that MM’s comments were made in public, in front of several media, including Goold. He said that those comments were open to interpretation and it didn’t mean any one interpretation was the absolute answer – including his interpretation.
This board tries it’s best to present a balanced, professional product and leave it up to the reader to process it as they see fit. In those areas where discernment and judgment are required, it presumes the reader is capable of that themselves.
You aren’t going to find any mea culpas here, not unless an error is made. Error, not the disseminating of other journalists/writers’ work on Cardinal- and baseball-related matters.
Matheny is gone. Not likely to be back as the St Louis manager. It’s done.
DROP IT (as my late father was wont to say)
I am the head engineer of the Martin Cordova train. Seriously impressed with the stats he’s putting up
It’s difficult to assess Molina’s statement without putting it into context. That is something we don’t have.
Is he volunteering this idea without prompting? (Mayhaps sounding a tad greedy)
Is he responding to a specific question (which we aren’t given) so the answer kind of makes you go “Hmmmm”
Is what ESPN quotes Yadi as saying the complete quote or an edited version?I very much doubt if Molina is trying to push Shildt out the door before he hardly gets in.
Brian’s podcast discussion of Shildt and Budaska reminded me of something Goold mentioned in his Q&A chatwrap yesterday.
Goold responded to a question about Budaska working with players by saying that he would, if the players were open to it.
When asked to clarify, Goold mentioned that some (many?) players have their own personal coach with whom they work. He specifically mentioned both Ozuna and Fowler as having their own coaches as well as a couple of others whose names I’m not remembering. Said that players had to be open to working with St Louis’ hitting coach(es) as well. Goold was very careful to stress that he wasn’t trying to imply that any particular players wouldn’t work with Budaska, merely that outside coaches were used.
I thought he did great. I just thought it was interesting that he hit two batters but they were both nailed on the base paths.
He actually hit two batters. But both were erased via a caught stealing and pick off so he faced the minimum through five.
I’ve waited to give my 2 cents re MM’s firing until I could post on my computer i/o my tablet…my little tablet with the little keys.
Anyway, I really hate to see anyone lose their jobs. But in this case it needed to happen. I haven’t seen anyone dumping the Cardinals’ issues entirely in MM’s lap but there’s an old sports adage about underperforming teams something to the effect that you can’t fire the entire team so the manager needs to go.
That doesn’t mean that I think Matheny was a scapegoat, not even close. Yes, he’s had to deal with injuries (as does every manager) and yes, many of his players don’t produce the way either a Pujols or Holliday in their prime did (not many do). But, holy snickers, look what Stubby Clapp has done at Memphis. That guy has had a whirling revolving door at Memphis since his managerial tenure began as St Louis desperately looked for Big Club help and he manages his pieces and injuries to where the Redbirds are a dominant force in the Pacific Coast League.
One of the oft-repeated compliments about Herzog’s in-the-clubhouse management was that he knew which player responded best to a pat on the tush (so-to-speak) and which one responded best to a kick in the same region. (After all, Andujar might well have been certifiable and how many pitchers leave a clubhouse during the play-offs to fly to their hometown so they can clean the clock of their sister’s ex-boyfriend who was harassing her and then flies back to pitch…looking at you Danny Cox.) That’s a huge aspect of player management. It really came across to we fans as if Matheny had a one-size-fits-all style within the clubhouse and that doesn’t work.
As far as next year’s manager goes, I think much depends on how this season plays out. Shildt’s no filler. He’s a very well-respected man with prior managerial success. Can he do it at the Major League level?
We’ll see.
Very good point, Pads. I agree.
Bw, that may well be part of it. OTOH, Hicks has opened himself up to critique by his actions too.
Cranny,
Whatever ‘The Load’ was doing to manage his clubhouse pretty much remained within the clubhouse. It rarely became ‘airing your dirty laundry in public’ the way this thing has.
Yes, I remember the Ozzie/TLR dust-up (who could forget) and the Rolen/TLR dust-up, so it did happen. But the point remains that none of that involved a player snitching on his teammates. I even remember Will Clark riding J.D. Drew (aka ‘wusscakes’ in my household) pretty good although nothing controversial came out of that.
I agree with the poster who said that the team winning would change our view of this matter. It would. But the team isn’t winning at a level that inspires much confidence in me for post-season success. And that’s what it’s all about.
It’s simply not done to have a player report on other players to the manager.
Not.Done!
It really messes with team cohesion and unity. (I realize that other factors, such as players’ personalities can mess with cohesion as well but that’s not the focus here.)
You should have a team constructed so the vets police the clubhouse and deal with most matters internally. If your team is not constructed as such, then it’s up to the manager to figure how to manage the off-the-field aspects of his players (and staff) so he doesn’t have to resort to one of his players being designated the Team Narc.
Gags is sorely missed. He’s alive and well but so busy with work that posting on the message board just doesn’t happen.
As many of you know, I’ve moderated versions of this board going back to a time that predates Brian’s involvement – the Fanhome days. (Wow, am I feeling old!)
Cranny also goes back that far. (How old are you feeling, cranny?). The same questions arose then as they do now – How does he know what he claims to know, etc?
A fellow mod whose integrity I trust 100% (no longer around) gave me enough information to satisfy me that cranny’s info is sound.
Like anything else, info can become obsolete & baseball has a lot of moving parts so info can change fairly quickly.
But I have yet to find Cranny making stuff up.
Here’s from the MiLB website (hopefully it’s current but I’ve found out-of-date info on it)
Here are the roster limits by league:
Triple-A: International, Pacific Coast — 25 active.
Double-A: Eastern, Southern, Texas — 25 active.
Class A Advanced: California, Carolina, Florida State — 25 active; 35 under control; no more than two players and one player-coach on active list may have six or more years of prior Minor League service.
Class A: Midwest, South Atlantic — 25 active; 35 under control; no more than two players on active list may have five or more years of prior Minor League service.Class A Short-Season: New York-Penn, Northwest — 35 active. No more than three players on the Active List may have four or more years of prior Minor League service.
Rookie: Appalachian, Pioneer leagues — 35 active. No more than three players on the Active List may have three or more years of prior Minor League service.Rookie: Arizona, Gulf Coast leagues — 35 active. No player on the Active List may have three or more years of prior Minor League service.
Rookie: Venezuelan Summer, Dominican Summer — 35 active. No player on the Active List may have four or more years of prior Minor League Service. No Draft-eligible player from the U.S. or Canada (not including players from Puerto Rico) may participate in the DSL or VSL.