Pujols, Molina say they want to manage. Does that put the heat on Cardinals’ Marmol?
Once things really started to fall apart for the St. Louis Cardinals in the summer of 2023, it seemed like Joe Maddon couldn’t fit enough television appearances into his schedule.
The former manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, Chicago Cubs, and most recently Los Angeles Angels – the Pennsylvania native who grew up idolizing Stan Musial – had no shortage of thoughts on how the team might get back on track, and the ways in which he would hypothetically pursue those improvements.
The performance drew no shortage of eye rolls inside the walls of Busch Stadium. If Maddon believed the Cardinals were about to make a managerial change – and throughout that long summer, they never seriously considered doing so – there were better ways to go about politicking for the job than loudly doing so on television.
He might have considered a softer touch.
“I’m serious about managing. This game has done so much for me, and now I want to give back,” Albert Pujols told Bob Nightengale of USA Today in a story published on March 8. “I’m ready.”
“If we decide as a family, if I have a chance to manage, I can manage anywhere,” Yadier Molina told Katie Woo of The Athletic in a story published on March 10. “I’d manage the Chicago Cubs, if they want.”
Take notes, Joe.
The Cardinals are at the threshold of a period of unprecedented uncertainty for this ownership group and this era of the franchise. An advertised reset which has settled into stagnation has left public opinion skeptical, to say the least, about the team’s chances for contending in 2025. A transition in the front office has already been signed, sealed and delivered, and Chaim Bloom waits in the wings to seize control of baseball operations at the conclusion of this season.
That conclusion, despite popular opinion, is not yet carved in stone.
There is an overwhelming surge of sentiment that these Cardinals are simply wasting time, burning a year off the calendar, unable to confront the realities of a full to-the-studs teardown. Whether well deserved or not, there is an undeniable undercurrent of disinterest in the act of baseball being played this summer.
Fans want change, and they don’t seem particularly interested in waiting patiently to find out which changes are and aren’t necessary. That would be an unenviable position for manager Oli Marmol even without the outside push from two franchise legends for a job which sounds very much like his.
Marmol’s contract runs through the end of the 2026 season, the result of an extension signed last spring. That extension was a public show of support from the club and also served as an attempt to remove one possible distraction from what they hoped would be a bounce back season. Even despite the extension, things got so dire in May of 2024 that when special assistant and former bench coach Joe McEwing was dispatched on a scouting trip throughout the minor league system, there were those in the building who wondered if he was building a big league staff.
A Mother’s Day victory in Milwaukee broke a seven-game losing streak and touched off a six-week stretch in which the Cardinals went 26-16, looking more like themselves and less like a team flailing for answers. They would remain competitive throughout the season – competitive enough that they added veteran reinforcements at the trade deadline – and they achieved the external quiet they desired.
In truth, Marmol has been saddled with a bad position since the day he took over as manager.
Mike Shildt was fired under the cloud of botched messaging from John Mozeliak and the team’s front office. The Cardinals played through a solid 2022 season which was buoyed by magic from Pujols, but they sputtered in the postseason and went out with a whimper. The next season was a disaster, and the next started too poorly for anyone to notice how well they recovered.
Now, with the team declaring a reset but not yet able to find the button to push to start it, Marmol is tasked with marshaling a group of players to improvements that will not be gauged fully on the team’s win-loss record, but that number will still exist, and it will still be noticed.
Neither Molina nor Pujols is actively seeking to push the incumbent manager out of his spot; Molina, for one, took pains to point out that he views Marmol as a “great manager” with a “really good coaching staff.” They should be lauded for having the desire to get back in the game and share their prodigious gifts with it in whatever way they see fit.
Outside calls for the legends won’t shake Marmol, either. He is, if nothing else, firmly convicted in his work and the place he has earned in the game, and he does enjoy strong support from the incumbent decision makers. His feelings can handle it; that is also, as the saying goes, what the money is for.
The looming transition to a group headed by Bloom is nonetheless an unknowable variable.
Bloom has been fastidious in avoiding public statements, outside of an introductory press conference after which he was whisked from the room like a Secret Service protectee. There is something to be said for continuity, and if Marmol fosters an environment in 2025 which allows players like Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker to approach their impressive ceilings, it would be hard to make a coherent argument for adding yet another layer of turnover to next winter’s changes.
Until and unless Molina and Pujols are hired as big league managers, though, they will loom in the background of every staffing decision the Cardinals make. Molina’s 2024 season as an “advisor” to Mozeliak never got off the ground, owing to family concerns, and the Angels have been protective of Pujols and the personal services contract he owes them for a decade following his retirement.
The volume of the chorus calling their names to the dugout is bound to be loud. The Cardinals could ignore it, if they wish. But just because the push is done a little more deftly than Maddon’s – a low bar, admittedly – doesn’t mean it won’t be felt.
