Oli Marmol says he’s confident in his preparedness to be St. Louis Cardinals’ manager
The introductory press conference for the youngest manager in Major League Baseball opened with his boss expressing surprise that a change was made at all.
But by the time the 45-minute session concluded, Oliver Marmol had expressed his own clear vision for continuing the path that he believes will lead the St. Louis Cardinals to glory.
“We will prepare in a way to take our shot at a championship,” Marmol said. “Anything less than that will be a disappointment.”
Clear expectations and a high bar can pose a daunting combination for a first-time major league manager, but Marmol’s familiarity with the organization and the pre-existing trust he has with some of its most important figures.
He’s already spoken with what he called “our core” — Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright. He also spoke with his direct predecessor, receiving Mike Shildt’s blessing to follow him as the franchise’s 51st manager.
“It was good to be able to, once everything got cleared up and we came to terms, to have that conversation with Mike and receive his support for moving this organization forward,” Marmol said.
For his part, in his statement last week, Shildt said that Marmol has his “deepest and most-trusted respect,” which was seemingly echoed in his presence in the background of Monday’s announcement.
Even as the Cardinals’ top executives came together to celebrate and honor their new manager, the sudden divorce from their previous one was a topic of conversation.
Reading from a prepared statement during his introduction, President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak conceded that, “perhaps our explanation on this was a bit vague.”
“We had internal issues we felt we could not resolve,” Mozeliak said. “We felt the best path forward was to make a change for the organization, regardless if it was not a popular one. We did not take this lightly.”
Mozeliak conceded that he did not expect to be making a managerial change as the team boarded its charter flight back to St. Louis following a loss to the Dodgers in the Wild Card game, and acknowledged that having Marmol as an available in-house option was part of the decision to move on from Shildt.
The Cardinals did not conduct a job search as much as they made the familiar corporate decision to move one employee up and, as a consequence, another employee out.
Whatever the proximate cause of the job opening, Marmol is as prepared as a first-time manager can be to seize the opportunity which lies in front of him. Asked about his youth — he’s younger than at least two of the players he’ll manage in 2022 — he instead answered with passion and commitment to the profession.
“I’ve never thought of my age as something that has an impact one way or another, positive or negative,” Marmol said. “If the player knows that you care, if the player knows that you’re prepared, and you have your thoughts organized when you approach them, and you can make them better, they listen to you.
“And on the other hand, if you’re not prepared, if they know you don’t care, and you’re more worried about yourself than them, and you can’t make them better, they don’t listen to you. So for me, age isn’t an impediment there.”
Indeed, for Marmol, the challenge may come more in managing up to the front office than down to the players on the field.
Twice on Monday morning, Mozeliak said that, as manager, Marmol would have “some autonomy,” especially when it came to constructing lineups and utilizing a pitching staff.
Still, “there is a level of collaboration with what you have going on upstairs,” Mozeliak said.
Marmol understands the necessity of collaboration in the analytics age, he said.
“I think at times there’s a misunderstanding as to kind of the newer managers ... when it comes to just saying yes to the front office,” Marmol said.
“When you work in a collaborative manner with the front office and your analytics department,” he explained, “it allows you to get feedback on, are the decisions you’re making sustainable over 162 (games)? What decisions are you making that are? What decisions are you making that aren’t?
“So it’s more of a collaborative mindset...with how managers are operating today opposed to 10, 15 years ago.”
As for hitting coach Jeff Albert, whose disagreements with Shildt were acknowledged as playing a role in the latter’s dismissal, Marmol called him a “good friend” and said that, “overall, our philosophies align.”
“You have to try to drive the baseball,” said Marmol. “You’ve got to walk. You’ve got to be able to do those things holistically. I think being well rounded is also part of this.”
Marmol acknowledged, though, that, “there’s some things with regard to messaging that we’ll improve upon in order to get our players to do what he’s wanting them to do and what they need to do in order to have success.”
In order for Marmol to be a competitive success, he will have to win a World Series. That is the standard which has been consistently set by the organization and which he himself established during his introduction, even as he acknowledged that almost all managerial relationships end in “divorce.”
As a person, Marmol is already an unqualified success. Just the second person of color to manage the Cardinals, the New Jersey-born, Dominican-descended, native Spanish-speaking St. Louis manager sees the path from which he came and the opportunity in his future.
“Some of the neighborhoods we lived in early on in Miami ... these opportunities don’t come across the table to the majority of the people that grew up like that,” Marmol said.
“And for them to be able to identify and see someone of color in a position of leadership, especially for a winning franchise, one with the history that the St. Louis Cardinals has, is extremely meaningful.”
The timing may have been a surprise. The man was not.
This story was originally published October 25, 2021 at 12:02 PM.
