It was on my daily stationary bike ride when I saw the bottom line scroll across the bottom of ESPN: “Cardinals Fire Manager Mike Shildt.”
My first instant reaction was one of disbelief and shock. How could the St. Louis Cardinals fire their manager after he led them on a 17-game winning streak? Sure, the Cardinals fizzled out against the Dodgers, but that was a game that no one predicted that team to be in. They had to leapfrog several teams, including the heavily-armored San Diego Padres, to get into that game. Just making it alone should have afforded Shildt the opportunity to manage next season.
My second thought was that the manager job for the New York Mets is vacant. Yes, even the current MLB playoffs, NFL action, or return of NHL couldn’t prevent me from thinking about them. With the team moved on from not only Luis Rojas but also any coach that wants to walk, and looking for a general manager and president of baseball operations, the possibilities are seemingly endless with who the team could bring in to run the ship. Yet, none of the potential manager candidates got me extremely excited. Carlos Beltran is Las Vegas’s pick to land the job, and while he possesses a great baseball mind, he has no experience managing at the major league level. And we’ve seen how that experiment has gone the past four seasons.
Bob Melvin, despite still being under contract with the Oakland A’s, is another name that gets mentioned for the job. While Melvin has earned his stripes in Oakland, there’s no knowing what he plans on doing for next season. The A’s might have a similar roster to what they had this season, as opposed to the Mets who are looking at a potential roster overhaul, which may entice Melvin enough to stay in Oakland for next season.
With that being said, Beltran, Melvin, or whoever else gets mentioned as a potential name for Mets manager next season should be as high on the priority list as Shildt. Shildt not only was great for the Cardinals this past season, but the two prior seasons as well. Over the three and change seasons that Shildt was at the helm in St. Louis, he was outstanding. He piloted them to a combined 252-199 record, with three consecutive playoff appearances. In addition to National League Manager of the Year honors in 2019, he also helped the Cardinals to a division crown.
Despite the sampling, there’s other factors that go into why Shildt should be a priority. Shildt, at age 53, is one year over the average age of an MLB manager as of 2020. This puts him at an interesting juxtaposition of being too young to fit into the old guard of MLB managers, yet too old to be lumped in with the new guard. If the Mets are trying to truly establish a culture of winning, and acting like winners on the field and in the office, it could be a smart move to hire a manager that’s young enough to be able to relate with the players on the roster, yet old enough to command respect. Shildt could be the man to lead the charge, and set the example in a way that the current Mets roster will adopt.
If the Mets end up wanting to hire Shildt, they’re going to have some competition to line up with, specifically the aforementioned Padres. San Diego has assembled a team talented enough to have no excuse to miss the playoffs like they did in 2021. At the end of the day, there was no other option but for them to fire Jayce Tingler. With such a stacked roster, and the threat of a closing opportunity window always looming, they’re a team that’s under intense pressure to hire the manager that’s going to lead them to the promised land. Shildt, the man whose team was responsible for keeping the Padres out of the postseason, should expect to receive a call for his services.
It was a shock to everyone that Shildt was let go by the Cardinals. It was especially a shock considering the reason that they gave for doing so. According to the Cardinals front office, it was a matter of “philosophical difference.” Maybe there was something internally between the front office and him, or maybe it is the Cardinals getting ready to blow things up. Only the parties involved will ever truly know. But the Cardinals are not alone in needing a “philosophical difference.” The Mets, who have not made the playoffs since 2016 and have new ownership that is willing to put in the effort and money to build a competitor. The fan base is hungry for competitive baseball again, competitive baseball that does not collapse in the second half of the season. Changes are going to come in many ways for the Mets this offseason, and adding Shildt as manager should be one of those changes.
Shildt is 252-199 as an MLB manager.
Shildt won the 2019 N.L Manager of the year award
Shildt’s Cardinals went on a 17-game winning streak in 2021 to make the playoffs as a wildcard.
Other teams will approach him and sign him before the Mets hire a POBO.
Shildt is an is an intriguing candidate but before they hire a manager they have to first hire a President of Baseball Operations and he will hire a General Manager. Then they should hire a manager.
St. Louis is an excellent franchise and their baseball philosophy turns out consistent winners. Before they hired Shidit they need to know what the “philosophical differences ” are. The POBO, GM and manager need to be on the same page.
I hope the Mets are busting butt to get the POBO hired, lest they allow too many opportunities to pass. We hear nothing, of course, but a guy like Steve Cohen won’t be happy waiting…
I do like guys like Shildt or Melvin. I want an older guy that makes decisions in the dugout based on his intelligence. I always got the feeling that Rojas was too young and was doing everything for his dad and uncles… afraid of making mistakes, arbitrary, rote, predictable. He overused Castro, May, Familia… why? because he pulled starters too soon.
It may take a while to wash the taste from my mouth…
The real fear is that prime managerial talent will be snapped up before the Mets are anywhere near hiring a skipper, lost in a morass of people that don’t want to oversee this club or waiting for the WS to end before harvesting organs from the Dodgers. And we end up with a clown like Beltran instead of a person that has proven to win games.
The Mets desperately need a guy like Schildt to install a “Mets way” that is something to be proud of instead of whatever the hell we presently have.
Shildt’s record speaks for itself, and his Cardinal pedigree should also be in high demand. But….POBO comes first, and given the combo of needing permission to speak to some well known targets, combined with a number of those targets still involved in the playoffs, really hurts the timeline. I also wonder how the “philosophical differences” tag might impede demand for his services. In the modern day game, run by the suits, the reputation of a guy that will make his own calls and buck the consensus just may be MLB’s Scarlet Letter. Guys that bet on games may have a better shot of managing than guys that go against the scripted game plan.
Yeah, as the team fiddles for PBO we will be left standing in the managerial musical chairs, unless we get the dreaded Beane/Melvin Alderson sycophants in a double move. Alderson loves those kinds of maneuvers so things can “get done” (remember Rauch and Frank Frank? – pen solved in 5 min flat!).
Today before games there was some discussion about Shildt, which no one thinks the details of which will ever surface, and it was focused on how much the Cardinals are hot on one or two of their coaching staff to move up. In any event we don’t know what that difference is, but the record speaks for itself. Who knows if the philosophy would align with whatever PBO we hire, but it is disappointing to know apparent quality skippers are likely to be off the table before the Mets step up to the buffet line.
Maybe the team doesn’t have to wait to hire a manager. While we think the POBO wants to hire his own guy, a new POBO inheriting a really quality on-field manager may not be a bad thing… one less crucial decision right away and something of a firewall if things go poorly. The whole point of hiring a quality manager is that things are less likely to go poorly.
I’ve said many times that a manager wins a team 8-10 games a year… bad manager loses those same games. Hard to quantify, but think of the effect of raising the water level a few inches… everything benefits… offense, pitching, clubhouse morale, toughness, resiliency, overall performance. How
many games does that equate to?
I say grab the best manager ASAP.
Wobbit I think you are overstating the impact of a manager particularly in today’s game when they don’t have the say that they used to in game decisions. By your logic the difference between a good manager and a bad manager is 16-20 games per year. That’s about the average bWAR of Trout and Ohtani over 162 games. No manager has that impact.
We need The Cardinals front office a lot more than we need their manager. They picked up Arenado and Goldschmidt to fill two big spots and they excelled at the plate and in the field. We never got our 3B and it hurt us most of the year. To be fair we expected our hitters to hit their averages or at least within 20% of their averages. They did not. If we had hit with runners in scoring position and made the playoffs, the we would be stuck with another year of Rojas. If we had a healthy Jake and Thor, we likely would have advanced this season. We would also not be apt to make some significant additions in the off season. I agree that they need to move their asses for the big baseball guy but seems that a protracted process will make us lose out on some managerial choices. I’d still take a Showalter or a Bochy for a few years over an unproved Beltran. We settled for unproven with Callaway, then lost Beltran to cheating and now dumped Rojas. Given his miscues, how well could Rojas have managed in our minor league system that we thought he was ready? I’d say he negatively impacted a lot more games than he positively impacted. Of course at least he never had the team bat out of order.
But I will add that I agree with your point to get a good manager and not wait.