Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins
That whole game was mismanaged. He pulled Waino after 95 pitches when he had given up six baserunners in 5 1/3. He pulled Gallegos after 12 easy pitches, and after he pulled McFarland, he passed over Cabrera, who had 71 appearances that season for Reyes. And Taylor doesn't have a platoon split.
Yeah, the team won 18 straight games, but that's a statistical anomaly borne of sequencing, not wizardry. It's the same reason why they've never been able to recreate their 2013 production with RISP.
He won 90 games playing almost 60 of them against teams that weren't actively interested in winning.
Oddly once the shift was eliminated, the Cardinals' philosophy of pitching to contact has been exposed as anachronistic. And for all the hate towards Molina, he historically depressed ERA.
Is Marmol unfit to manage? Yeah. But the problem isn't Marmol and the solution isn't Shildt; the problem is ownership and the solution is making them care or making them sell.
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Wainwright had been running on fumes down the stretch and exposing him to that monster of a lineup again was no sort of obvious decision. Gallegos got
hurt. Cabrera had been just as erratic as Reyes. No, he didn't 'mismanage' any of that - he just didn't do what you'd have done but each of those decisions, in a vacuum, have an easy explanation. Nothing he did in that game is even obviously
wrong, let alone 'fireable'.
The team won 18 straight because Shildt continued to work on guys like O'Neill, Whitley, Carlson, etc... and found ways to make them productive and maximize their abilities. They were playing
hard and you can call that sequencing all you want, but they were creating those opportunities for themselves by simply battling every game.
And as I said in the Royals thread - everyone complains about strength of schedule for teams but then their guys still go out and lose to them. At a point you're just looking for reasons not to give credit, not any sort of discrediting factor.
And the problem with the Cardinals 'pitch to contact' philosophy is that they didn't actually have one of those for about 5 years but now they've been forced into it by a simple lack of
talent. As I said a few days ago, they were ahead of the curve on this before simple laziness and incompetence on the part of Mozeliak set them back literally 15 years.
If Shildt isn't a good manager, then baseball has maybe 4 of those. He's still, relative to his peers and the impact he can actually make on a game to game basis, a good manager. And frankly, between the lines isn't as critical as managing the grind. He did that extremely well and we saw players progressing on his watch that have regressed since his departure.
Would this roster be substantially more successful with Shildt at the helm? Eh - depends on 'substantial'. This is probably a .525 true talent ballclub; 85 wins or so. Would they be WS favorites? No. Would they be last in the NL? Abso****inglutely not. And without the free hand granted by a yes man like Marmol, this wouldn't be the roster we have anyway.