Bernie On The Cardinals: Mike Shildt Returns To Busch Stadium As Manager Of The Padres. With Bragging Rights.

Mike Shildt is back in The Lou as manager of the resurgent San Diego Padres. This four-game series is, well, awkward for Cardinals’ management.

Shildt was fired shortly after the 2021 season despite guiding the Cardinals to the playoffs in three consecutive years.

In 2019, Shildt led St. Louis to 90 wins and a victory over the Braves in the NLDS. It was the first (and still only) postseason-series triumph by the franchise since the 2014 Cards defeated the Dodgers.

Shildt won the 2019 NL Manager of the Year award and finished third in the voting in 2021.

Shildt’s teams in St. Louis had a special characteristic, playing their best baseball after the All-Star break – or late in the season, as was the case in the pandemic-related chaos of 2020. Shildt had a way of correcting problems on the fly, keeping his team sharp fundamentally, keeping the lines of communication wide open, and finding solutions to problems to hang tough until the roster was ready to make a run.

2018: Shildt succeeded the fired Mike Matheny right before the All-Star break. The underachieving Cardinals came dramatically better once Shildt took over, and went 40-27 after the All-Star pause.

2019: The Cardinals were 47-27 after the All-Star break and charged to the NL Central title for the first time since 2015.

2020: Shildt did a masterful job of getting the Cardinals to the playoffs despite an enormously difficult schedule. Shildt’s team was hit with two different Covid outbreaks that summer and needed to play seven doubleheaders to make up for games lost. This meant the Cardinals had to pack in 29 games over the final 23 days of the season. But Shildt’s guys went 16-13 and won eight of their last 12 to qualify for the postseason.

2021: The Cardinals experienced all kinds of hardship because of a broken-down starting rotation and were still under .500 (55-56) as late as Aug 8. And they were only one game over .500 (69-68) on Sept. 7. But Shildt’s Cardinals went 21-4 in their last 25 games, a spree that included a wild and memorable 17-game winning streak. The Cardinals were eliminated by the Dodgers in a tight, winner-take-all wild card showdown played Oct. 6 in Los Angeles.

Eight days later, Cardinals president of baseball ops John Mozeliak stunned Cardinal Nation and the baseball industry by sacking Shildt.

The tension between Shildt and Mozeliak had reached a breaking point. The manager and the head of baseball ops disagreed on the future direction of the team. That wasn’t abnormal, because managers have clashes with their front office people.

No manager pushed harder than Tony La Russa, but he’s explained his own philosophy on these the manager vs. front office rituals. According to La Russa, it’s fine to make your best case for a move or a change and press the issue, but after a while it’s time to stand down. The executives above the manager are paid to make roster decisions and have the authority. The bosses, not the manager, have the final say.

TLR always respected that boundary. He didn’t like all of the decisions made by his friend, general manager Walt Jocketty. They battled, probably more than any of us know. But the debates with Jocketty never escalated into something poisonous.

Shildt, a first-time manager, was overzealous in his disagreements with Mozeliak. Whatever Shildt said or did crossed the line with Mozeliak. I realize that Mozeliak is extremely unpopular with the fan base, so few will accept the premise of Mozeliak having legitimate reasons to move Shildt out. That’s fine. No pushback from me.

There was also an increasing amount of friction between Shildt and members of his coaching staff, and that concerned Mozeliak. Instead of discussing a contract extension with Shildt, Mozeliak pivoted and fired the guy that he (Mo) brought into the organization as a scout.

I’m not defending Mozeliak here, and at this point, it doesn’t matter. Mozeliak made the call, and by now we know how that’s worked out for the Cardinals and Shildt. The Cardinals didn’t get better for dumping Shildt. Their success has gradually subsided.

The win goes to Shilty. The last laugh goes to Shilty, even if he’ll be a gentleman and suppress it.

– Since Mozeliak dismissed Shildt and promoted bench coach Oli Marmol to the manager’s seat, the Cardinals have a .504 winning percentage that ranks 16th in the majors and eighth in the NL.

– From the time Shildt took over for the deposed Matheny midway through 2018 until his final regular-season game in 2021, Shildt had a .559 winning percentage as STL’s manager. More notably, the Cardinals were eighth overall and fourth in the NL during Shildt’s term in office.

– Some of the Cardinals’ best young hitters and position players had their best seasons as a Cardinal under Shildt. The list includes Tyler O’Neill, Dylan Carlson, Harrison Bader, Tommy Edman, Paul DeJong, Kolten Wong, Edmundo Sosa and Lane Thomas.

– On the pitching side, starters Jack Flaherty and Dakota Hudson and relievers Giovanny Gallegos, Alex Reyes and Genesis Cabrera were at their best during the Shildt seasons. Injuries were an obvious factor in the declines of Flaherty and Hudson. And you can make the case (as I did) that Shildt overworked Reyes, Gallegos and Cabrera. But that isn’t a crime. It isn’t easy to run a bullpen and bypass your best guys to give them more rest between appearances.

– By contrast, too many young hitters have fallen into disarray and/or disappointment since Shildt’s departure. The recent examples include Carlson, Jordan Walker, and Nolan Gorman. In fairness, there have been success stories with shortstop Masyn Winn and professional hitter Alec Burleson. And also to be fair, Shildt wouldn’t play Randy Arozarena late in 2020 after the front office promoted the rookie from the minors. This was a factor in the team’s decision to trade Arozarena to Tampa Bay for pitcher Matthew Liberatore. (And we know the rest.) And Lane Thomas did stall out later on under Shildt – mostly because of injuries – and Mozeliak traded Thomas to the Nationals for starting pitcher Jon Lester in 2021. As he should have.

I know one thing for sure: the Cardinals’ deep-rooted problems are centered in the front office and management. The drafting and player development. The staff sizes of the coaching here and in the minors. The lapse in maintaining a strong infrastructure and keeping up with technology and analytics.

That’s why I have empathy for Marmol, who was given the manager’s job at a bad time – not long before the Cardinals’ organization was about to crash for reasons above his level and beyond his control.

As my friend Will Leitch pointed out in our latest “Seeing Red” podcast, Shildt got his opportunity to manage St. Louis at a more favorable time. The Cardinals were still good, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado were younger and better, and the Cards made the playoffs in three straight seasons. (Including 2021, when Arenado and Goldy were teammates for the first time.)

The Cardinals won no pennants under Shildt, but I wouldn’t blame him for that. Just as I don’t blame Marmol for the 71-91 debacle last season, or the flawed roster this year, or the reality of Goldschmidt and Arenado losing power as they age. The Cardinals like to hype their prospects — and overrate them.

Marmol is unpopular with fans, mostly because of his association with Mozeliak. That’s how it goes. As I said, this really comes down to the front office and ownership. I don’t want to slight Marmol for his 93-win season in 2022. And I sure as heck don’t want to slight Shildt for his work as Cards manager.

Shildt cleaned up the Cardinals on defense and baserunning, frequently got his players to play their best, and knew how to make breakthroughs with struggling young players and get them to play to their potential.

The Cardinals weren’t a superpower under Shildt – but they were widely respected, still feared to some extent, and definitely still relevant. That’s no longer the case, because the gravity of ownership-management shortcomings has pulled them down. The hope is that the Cardinals will make the necessary changes that will lead to their rising.

Shildt has a more attractive situation in San Diego. At the All-Star break the Padres were 1 and ½ games behind the Cardinals in the wild-card scramble. As the teams open a four-game set Monday night, the Padres are eight games better than the Cardinals in the standings since the All-Star break. There’s been a huge change in both teams’ fortunes.

Since the All-Star break, the Padres are 24-9 for the second-best record in the majors. This fits the Shildt pattern: not including 2020 – when there was no All-Star break and only 60 games – Shildt’s teams in St. Louis and San Diego have a phenomenal .638 winning percentage after the All-Star break.

It hasn’t been an easy cruise for the Padres this season. They had four different five-game losing streaks in the first half and went into the break with a pedestrian 50-49 record. The Cardinals were 50-46.

Manny Machado got off to a poor start, and there have been some serious injuries to cope with along the way – most notably hitters Fernando Tatis and Xander Bogaerts and starting pitchers Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove.

But the aggressive Padres front office acquired coveted starting pitcher Dylan Cease before the season, traded for high-batting-average third baseman Luis Arraez early in the season, and buttressed the roster at the trade deadline with the trade additions of starting pitcher Martin Perez and shutdown relievers Tanner Scott and Jason Adam.

Perez has a 2.70 ERA and the Padres have won all five of his starts. Adam and Scott have combined for a 2.07 ERA in 21 and ⅔ innings. They joined a strong coterie of setup relievers to pin opponents down until it’s time for the excellent closer Robert Suarez to march in.

The Padres hope to get Tatis and Darvish back for the September push. Even without them for large blocks of the season, the Padres are 16 games above .500 and are tangling with the Diamondbacks and Dodgers for first place in the NL West. At this point, FanGraphs gives the Padres a 95.4 percent chance to make the playoffs.

The Padres love their new manager.

“When you play 162 (games), you’ve got to try to find the positives,” Musgrove told reporters in July. “Obviously, you don’t ignore the negatives, but (Shildt) is never gonna go out there and air us out to the fans and the media. He obviously wants to keep us in a good light to the fans that are watching every day.

“But all that stuff is addressed in here. And it’s never like it’s never scolding or shaming somebody for not getting the job done. It’s like, ‘This is what we need to be better. This is how we can be better. This is what I think you did right, but we could have been a little better.’ It’s just always a positive approach. There’s always something that he sees out there that he likes or doesn’t like that’s going to help you get better.”

I don’t think Shildt would play it this way publicly, but if the Padres hit the Cardinals with a body blow this week to reduce STL’s postseason chances to ashes, he’d probably take some extra enjoyment from it. And who would blame him?

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie

A 2023 inductee into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, Bernie has provided informed opinions and perspective on St. Louis sports through his columns, radio shows and podcasts since 1985.

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Stats used in my baseball columns are sourced from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Statcast, StatHead, Baseball Savant, Baseball Prospectus, Brooks Baseball Net, and Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise noted.