Following the 2021 season, the St. Louis Cardinals made a shocking decision, firing manager Mike Shildt over what the front office described as a "philosophical difference."
A few weeks later, St. Louis promoted Oli Marmol to the managerial role, and Shildt soon took a coaching job with the San Diego Padres.
The Padres now find themselves in a position where they will need to find a new manager after Bob Melvin was lured away by the San Francisco Giants. According to Padres insider Dennis Lin of The Athletic on X (formerly Twitter), the Padres have a few internal candidates in mind, those being Shildt and Ryan Flaherty.
The expectation is that one of those two will receive the job, even if external candidates are interviewed.
Looking at the Cardinals, however, they have not won a postseason game since 2020 and have yet to win a postseason series since 2019. St. Louis won 93 games in Marmol's first season with the team, but were trounced by the Philadelphia Phillies in the Wild Card Series.
This season, the Cardinals lost 91 games and finished in last place in the NL Central, which begs the question of whether or not the Cardinals made a mistake in firing Shildt.
Does Padres interest in Mike Shildt prove Cardinals wrong for firing him?
The popular consensus around the league and among the fanbase is that the Cardinals made a major mistake when Shildt was let go. But it's important to look at what has taken place in St. Louis since Shildt was fired.
The Cardinals won the NL Central in 2022, but were a quick postseason exit. The 93 wins may have been misleading due to the fact that the Cardinals were playing in one of baseball's weaker divisions and essentially ran away with the division title.
Marmol and Shildt are also two very different baseball minds. When Shildt took over for Mike Matheny in July of 2018, he focused the vast majority of his efforts on improving the team's fundamentals, which were lacking before Matheny was dismissed.
From 2019-21, the Cardinals defense was among the best in Major League Baseball. That also carried over into 2022, Marmol's first season at the helm.
However, 2023 was a different story. The team's defense ultimately improved as the season went on, and the team finished with just 67 errors, the fourth fewest in baseball. But early on in the season, defense was an issue.
But even with much of the same team as they had in 2022, St. Louis had a dreadful 2023 season.
Matheny was fired when the Cardinals were slipping close to the .500 mark. Shildt took over for Matheny when the team was 47-46, and he led them on a 41-24 stretch to end that season. Shildt then proceeded to lead St. Louis to the postseason in three consecutive years, which included an epic 17-game winning streak in 2021.
Unlike Shildt, Marmol is a very analytically driven manager, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, Marmol's reliance on analytics has led him to some trouble.
Earlier in the season, he often did not start Brendan Donovan and Nolan Gorman against left-handed pitchers. Instead, he opted to use Taylor Motter. One glaring example came on April 9 when the Cardinals had the bases loaded with nobody out in a game against the Milwaukee Brewers.
Donovan was at the plate, but Marmol opted to pinch hit Motter with a left-hander on the mound, despite Donovan's prior success against lefties. Motter proceeded to strike out.
Marmol also constantly gave the regulars off days all at once, particularly in the final games of road series. More often than not, St. Louis lost those games.
So far, Marmol doesn't exactly have a great track record. While the Cardinals enjoyed much success under Shildt, Marmol has been unable to produce the same results.
It is for this reason that the Cardinals may have in fact made a grave mistake when they fired Shildt and replaced him with Marmol. St. Louis played relatively clean baseball when Shildt was at the helm but were unable to do so in 2023 with Marmol as the team's manager.
