Ties between Marmol and Shildt run deep. How will that play out in Cardinals-Padres series?
Ahead of the 2007 MLB Draft, Mike Shildt was an area scout for the St. Louis Cardinals whose territory covered the Carolinas, and Oli Marmol was a standout infielder at the College of Charleston.
Hearing about him through the scouting grapevine, Shildt covered a game and wrote up a report on the player who would become the Cardinals’ sixth round pick that year, noting that on the traditional 20-80 scouting scale, Marmol clocked in at a 70 in potential for speed.
A decade later, they spent two seasons hanging on the dugout rail together as Shildt managed the Cardinals and Marmol served as his bench coach. In that capacity, they exchanged ideas back and forth as games went on, stress testing scenarios and making sure no stone was unturned, even if they were confident nothing positive was lurking underneath.
“As a bench coach, you have a really good idea of what the manager likes to do and how he thinks,” Marmol said Monday behind his desk at Petco Park, as game time against the Padres approached. “Part of your job is to bring up the other side of it. There’s times as a bench coach [when] you bring up stuff that you wouldn’t do either, but you have to bring it up so at least you talk about it.”
How, then, do these two men square off against each other in the chess match of a Major League Baseball game, when each has thoroughly plumbed the depths of the other’s thought processes?
“I don’t know yet,” Shildt, now manager of the Padres, said with a laugh before Monday’s matchup. “I think it’ll probably just normalize itself into a regular baseball game.
“We’ve had a lot of baseball conversations over a lot of years,” he added. “Spent time from extended spring training all the way to the big leagues. He’s clearly done a nice job over there, but ultimately it’s about getting my club ready.”
Many of the questions posed to Shildt on Monday were about his former organization and the 18 years he spent there climbing through the ranks to his profession’s pinnacle before a sudden crash down in 2021. He was at times emotional, a slight quaver noticeable in his voice and his eyes going glassy with held back tears, only to be spared by a question about knuckleballer Matt Waldron or shortstop Ha-Seong Kim.
Marmol and Shildt met and spoke on the field early Monday before heading off to work, the most recent of their many conversations that used to carry a very different tone. At 6:40 PM, at first pitch, they’re still working through what the other is thinking, but now for competitive advantage rather than a common goal.
“Preparation,” was Marmol’s answer when asked what made Shildt a good manager. “You can be extremely prepared for a pitcher and still not do well,” he said. “You can be extremely prepared for a game and it still gets sideways.
“You want to make sure that you and your staff know what you’re about to go up against, and what they like to do, and how they’re looking to win and how you’re going to combat that, what their weaknesses are and how you can take advantage of them and be prepared so that if an opportunity does come up that you know is a tell or whatever, that you’re in a position that guys are aware to be able to capitalize on it. When you’re not prepared, those things pop up and they go by without you doing anything about it.”
True to form, Shildt was prepared for the barrage of questions about his time in St. Louis, and eager as ever to praise those who came before him, especially legendary instructor George Kissell and field coordinator Mark DeJohn. Marmol, too, mentioned DeJohn as the genesis of an organization-wide policy known as “yellow pad,” named for the chosen tool of the trade.
In Marmol’s time as a minor league manager in the Cardinals system, as well as Shildt’s, managers were expected to work through diligent notes after a game for discussion with their coaching staffs, flipping every possible moment into a learning opportunity.
“Of course,” Shildt said when asked if his time in St. Louis was a permanent part of his coaching DNA. “That’s a lot of what my fabric is. It’s just about playing the game the right way. I’ve had some people in my life that I get emotional thinking about them and talking about them, because they mean the world to me.
“Any time you have people in your life that care about you and your genuine best interests beyond their self interest, your career is pretty special.”
Marmol, like Shildt, said he didn’t expect his special insight into his counterpart’s thought process to play a particular role in this series between their clubs. The game has taken them here, a continent away from Charleston, in roles neither might have anticipated, but roles that neither may have reached without the help of the other.
It’s hard to come by preparation for that sort of meeting.