Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - Was Extending Marmol The Right Thing To Do? Another Injury To A Key Pitcher Plus A Sonny Gray Update

Episode Date: March 16, 2024

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Some good and bad pitcher injury updates. Plus, the Cardinals have signed manager, Ali Marmel, to an extension. Is this the right move after a 91 lost season? We'll talk about it today on Locked on Cardinals. You are Locked on Cardinals. Your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked on podcast network. Your team every day. Hey there, Cardinals fans.

I'm Jaddy Haffern and I'm a national radio sports anchor. Born and raised in the Lou and a lifetime Cardinals fan. and I'm your host for Locktown Cardinals, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network covering your team every day. You can follow me on Twitter X at JD Sports Radio. You can follow the podcast at L.O. underscore Cardinals. I want to thank those of you who make Locktown Cardinals your first listen every day. We're free and available wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on YouTube.

If you stop by there, be sure to like and subscribe and comment so you can interact with us and hit that notification button so you know when the new episodes are posted. This is a show serving Cardinal Nation and giving the best fans in baseball all of the info about the birds, on the bat. So before we get rolling on things today and get into the deep discussion about the Ali Marmal extension that was announced on Friday, let's do some injury updates. Not great news on reliever Keenan Middleton. Not the worst news, but it's not great news. Dealing with a forearm strain and will be shut down for 10 days and we'll start the season on the injured list, which is another reason why it was smart for the Cardinals to go out and grab as many bullpen arms as they could, whether it was through free agency, through Rule 5 draft, through trades, they wouldn't

got a bunch of them because inevitably somebody's going down. You know, injuries happen to pitchers all the time. So that probably makes life a little easier for somebody like Ryan Fernandez and Andre Palante to start the season on the roster with the club. Got Halsley, G.O. Kittridge, Joe Joe, Riley O'Brien, then Ryan Fernandez, Andre Palante, Matthew Libertore. That could be your bullpen to start the season. So we've got some better news, though, on Sunny Gray, who, if you remember, strained that right hamstring back on March the 4th. He's going to be pitching in a simulated pregame situation tomorrow on Sunday at Roger Dean Stadium

against Titters standing in the box. They're not going to be swinging. They're just going to be standing there. It is the next step in his rehabilitation program, one that the Cardinals are hoping will make him available to at least pitch in that opening series against the Dodgers opening day. Probably not going to happen. So to further simulate game-like conditions, Gray will also sit down after a number of pitches and throw a limited second round of pitches as well. The Cardinals are hopeful that this session will lead to Gray being able to face live hitting next week and potentially do that in a Great Fruit League game, not just against, know, somebody on the back field. So bad news on Middleton, good news on Sunny Gray.

Is it good or bad news? What happened yesterday with Ali Marmal? Well, the Cardinals and manager Ali Marmal agreed on a two-year extension, retaining him as the manager of the team through 2026. And we're going to get to some of your comments because we've got a bunch of them. We're going to do that here in a little bit because I know that a lot of fans aren't going to be all that happy about this for a number of different reasons. But what I would like to do is kind of, give you the reasons why I think the Cardinals thought this was a good idea. Okay. And it was something that the Cardinals felt that they needed to do.

Number one, nobody likes to go into a season with uncertainty about their future, whether you're a player or a coach. Nobody. Nobody likes that. So to be on a one-year deal, basically, and to not know what your future is going to be, it's tough. Would it be a good idea to have Ali trying to lead and trying to do his job? with the cloud of his future constantly in the back of his mind or in his players' minds,

constantly being asked about it by media? Probably not. So in that sense, it's nice that they've kind of put that to bed. They put it into it, squash it already before any of these things possibly become problems, right? Number two, it shows faith in your guy. All right? The cardals have been grooming Ollie for quite some time now, a number of years to be a manager in their system to be the manager of the Cardinals at the major league level.

And in his first year, after the abrupt firing of Mike Scheld, the team won 93 games under his leadership. People will say, yeah, but he had, you know, Albert and Yadi and Wainwright, and he had Skip Schumacher on his bench. And I get all that. I absolutely get all that. But 93 wins, I mean, you don't suck as a manager and get 93 wins. That's more wins than Schilt. ever got in his three seasons, one of them shortened by COVID, mind you. But replacing Schilt probably was not very easy for Ali, who coached under him. He was on the staff. It's not like he just came out of nowhere and became the manager of the Cardinals.

He was under Mike Schult on that staff. Schill was a manager of the year winner, was up for the award again in 2021 when he was let go. The firing of Mike Schult had nothing to do with Ali Marmal. But when the power struggle became too much, the front office just said enough is enough. and they told Mike Schilt to take a hike. They're like, no, this is how we're doing things. And if you're not on board, then we're going to move on and do something else. They did.

And they found a guy already in their organization who they saw eye to eye with. And he agreed with how things should be run. It was like, okay, I'm willing to do it this way. I agree with you on this. So it just made a lot of sense. So Ali slid right into the role. And now you have a chance to reward him with. his work ethic that he has shown and his dedication to the organization. Number three,

Ali is only in his third year as a manager at the major league level. So he's still the youngest manager in the league at 37 years of age. And through the ups and downs, he's been a pretty upstanding guy about all of it. When there were things that didn't go all so well, you know, the Tyler O'Neill situation, he spoke up, you know, he didn't hide about it. Did he do the right thing by bringing it up to the media? I don't think so. That'll be Tyler O'Neill liked it. I don't think the fans liked it. But he did it and he's learned from it. I don't think you'll have that problem ever again. And I respect the fact that last year when things were as bad as we've seen him here in St. Louis in a long, long time, he was still there talking to the media,

talking about the game, what went right, what went wrong, was still doing his thing. And I respect that. I do. You like those kinds of people leading others, guys who are upstanding and aren't afraid to stand in front of the cameras and stand in front of the microphones. And even when things are awful, still give you the honest opinions of what the heck's going on and how they're going to try to continue to win games, even when they were basically fielding a AAA team at the end of the year. Number four, last year was rough for everyone involved. But from all reports that I've heard and saw, Allie never lost the clubhouse. And that was very, very important because that's something you always think is going to happen

when you start seeing a team struggle, right? That whoever's in charge, whoever the manager is, whoever the head coach is, whatever sport it may be, that they've lost the locker room or they've lost the clubhouse, the players don't believe in him anymore, they don't want to play for him anymore. And that wasn't happening with the Cardinals. Players weren't turning on him and shutting him out because they didn't want to play for him anymore or felt he wasn't qualified to be their manager. In fact, it was the opposite, if you remember, where players were speaking up to support

Ollie and pitching coach Dusty Blake as much crap as we gave them. And I was one of them, you know, when things are going bad, it's real easy to start blaming people. And, you know, talking about Ali and Dusty Blake is where it started. But the players never went that route. during a very tumultuous season. They never turned their backs off. Did he make mistakes last year? Yeah, of course.

Sure. All managers do. The beloved Witte Herzog and Tony LaRusa made tons of mistakes, but they learned from them and they become better managers because of it. Mike Schiller made plenty of mistakes in those three short years that he was the manager, despite how good the Cardle's records were. But because of the way the season went, considering the expectations, the fan base turned on Ollie and started pointing fingers at him.

The media started pointing fingers at them. And this isn't me chastising anybody who did that because I was one of them. I was one of them. Because when things fail, leadership is the first person that should be blamed. Rarely do we start with the players. It always falls for some reason. It never goes straight to the GM of whatever sport it is. It always goes to the head coach or the manager, their coaches, defensive coordinators,

office of coordinators, pitching coaches, hitting coaches. And then it starts to trickle around and start to go to other people like the GM or the players on the field. But the players never even hinted that there was an issue between them and the coaching staff last year. You never heard that except for things like with Tyler Odeo. Where, you know, he's talked about this since it all went down where he's like, yeah, we were able to squash it and we've all moved on. It's okay. We're cool. They continue to put the blame on themselves, really, the players were.

They were saying it's us. Anytime they were given the chance, when your leaders like Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Aronado were in front of microphones and on cameras, they were the ones saying, it's us. We're the ones that aren't doing anything, right? We're the ones screwing it up. It's not them. It's not, it's not Ollie.

It's not dusty. And after the year was over, president of baseball operations, John Mosella, continued to steer blame from Ali and put it on himself. And rightfully so. You know, they never just hung Ali out to dry and let him take the beating from all of us. I thought that was very telling of how everyone viewed him not only as a manager, but as a person. Buildow it, Jr., Mo, and Ali all spoke on Friday in Jupiter after the deal was announced, and I'm going to share with you what they had to say.

Plus, we've got some fan comments and reactions to the extension. All of that coming up on Lockedong Cardinals. Did you know that even if you have a 401k for retirement, you can still have an IRA? Robin Hood has the only IRA that a 3% boost on every dollar you contribute when you subscribe to Robin Hood Gold. But get this. Now through April 30th, Robin Hood is even boosting every single dollar you transfer in from other retirement accounts with a 3% match. That's right. No cap on the 3% match.

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Lockdown Podcast Network. Find it on March 20th at 7 p.m. Eastern on the Lockdown Sports Today, 24-7 streaming channel on YouTube or the free Amazon Fire TV channels app. Thank you guys for making Locktalk Carmel's your first listen every day. A lot of comments. A lot of comments about the extension. I would say 90% of them not so good. People are kind of negative about it, but there were some people out there that were like, look, I think it's a good idea. So if you have an opinion on the extension that Ali Marmal was just given, please let me know in the comments section on this particular show or you can also hit me up on Twitter X. Now, we heard from Cardinals Management and Ali himself on Friday about the extension. So let's just roll into some of the quotes here, courtesy of all of the great reporters who are down to Jupiter.

Derek Gould, Katie Wu, just a couple off the top of my head there. They're all down there doing great work. So let's start with Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. First, who Derek Gould reported that Bill DeWitt Jr. said he valued continuity. And we know that. It's been kind of crazy how the managers have been spinning in St. Louis over the last couple of years, Mathini, DeShil, to Holly.

And that's not normal. You know, we've normally had somebody who's in that chair for a long, long time. And they like continuity and they like somebody they trust. And Marble was the leader that Bill DeWitt Jr. Wanted to continue steering the team out of last year's last place finish. That according to Derek Cole. Now, John Moseilock on why doing this now, like what was the point? Like, why is at this moment the reason why this is happening?

And here's the quotes from Mosea Lack, who spoke for quite a while. He said, Bill and I had been reflecting on this for some time. The way we approached our offseason was to address our roster. We knew there was going to be some major overhaul. We felt we had accomplished that. As we got into camp, just seeing how things were working, really felt like things were being run well and did not want to go into the year with this being a distraction for Ali, for the staff, or for the players.

Ultimately, we have a lot of faith in him. We believe he's the right person for this job. and we're excited to know he'll be here for the next few years. It was important for us to get this done, and we're glad it's behind us. We look forward to a future with Ali. He continued by saying the most important thing for Ali, for the coaches or the players, is to know that we stand behind them. We believe in them.

To go into the season with a lame duck manager just seemed to be the wrong strategy, given the fact that with the roster we've assembled, we believe, is going to be competitive. And this is something we brought up before, though, the whole lane duck manager thing. When, if Yadi shows up, everybody kind of felt like it's just awkward that Ali's in his last year, Yaddy or Molina wants to be a manager, coming off a really bad year, if things don't quite go the way they want to, is it just Ali keeping the seat warm for Yadi? Is that what was going to go on? And, you know, you talked, you heard Ali talk about it at the winter warmup and then spring

training where like he's like, no, I want you out here. I'm excited that he wants to be a part of this organization still and, and help us out. I mean, what else is going to say? No, like, no, I'm kind of nervous that Yadi's going to be standing next to me judging every move I make. And knowing that the fans are going to be sitting there going, we want Yadi, if something goes wrong. It makes a lot of sense to kind of put the kibosh on that type of situation. John Mosea-Lock continued here. We just don't want something where if we stumbled or got off to a slow start,

all of a sudden everybody is looking over their shoulders, exactly. It's just not fair to everybody involved. The timing of this as we started thinking more and more about it had to be dealt with now, not something mid-season or at the end of the year. And we've discussed how difficult the beginning of this season is going to be. Like we haven't shied away about it. The Cardinals have told you that it's kind of rough at the beginning of this season. So you can tell they're already preparing themselves and be like, look, if we get out of this at like 500,

we're going to be pretty happy because they've got to face the Dodgers, the Padres, the Phillies, the Diamondbacks, the Marlins, all of these guys are playoff teams to start the year. They got to do the traveling from the West Coast, back to the Central. back to the West Coast. And on top of that, you're dealing with injuries to two of your starting outfielders and Tommy Edmund and Lars Neupar. You've got the sunny gray scare. You now got the Keenan Middleton injury.

You know, these are, I know they sound like excuses, and you can label them as that if you want to, but there are reasons why things might be very, very tough for the Cardinals in the early goings of this particular season. Clearly, they don't want the whispers about replacing him popping up early. on if the cardals begin the season a bit slow due to all of these variables. According to Katie Wu, extending Marmal was not actually a decision that John Mosella had set on in January or February. She says it wasn't until over the past few days that an extension began coming to fruition, but neither ownership nor the front office felt a need to move on from Marmal after 2023,

and neither was necessarily planning to at the end of this season either, even if things went awry once more. Now, as far as Ali's take on the extension, obviously he was excited about this. Here were the quotes from Ollie. I think I got a picture. Here we go. Here's a picture, Ollie. I've never wanted this to be a distraction. There is a lot to be excited about what I think of the core group of veterans in that clubhouse right now.

And then the young group, the next wave that's coming. It's a really good mix. To be in this seat, to be able to hold that for the next several years, it's exciting. I got more from Ali, and I've got your comments coming up about the extension next on Locktown Cardinals. Fire TV is your destination for sports from live games to highlights to in-depth analysis. Fire TV offers amazing viewing experiences with smart TVs as well as the Fire TV stick that you can plug into your existing TV that provides access to millions of movies and TV episodes

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in the free Fire TV channels app. Locked on Sports Today is here for you 24-7 covering the top sports stories of the day with the local experts of Lockdown, plus our national shows covering every league by Lockedon Sports Today right now. It's available on the free Fire TV channels app. So a quote that got brought up in Derek Gould's story yesterday, if you're good enough, they'll keep you. That was the phrase that Ali said to. the post dispatch back in December. And Mo and Bill DeWitt clearly believe in him. The players stuck up for him. So for him to get this deal done, it was great news for everybody involved. Now it's not an issue. Now it's not a distraction. And Marmal even touched on this, actually,

saying that on my end, this is an awesome day. I mean to have the support of Moe and Mr. to it means a lot to my family and myself. When I'm looking at this position, this seat is the best job in all of baseball. It's one of the top jobs in all of sports. When we had the discussion and talked about what the next couple of years look like, it felt right. This is all I've ever known, the Cardinals organization.

I'm passionate about the rich history of winning and the tradition of the St. Louis Cardinals. But just because management felt this way doesn't mean that everybody is. else feels the same way you know I know that normally the angry and negative people are the ones who speak up the most when it comes to social media there are the ones who chime in all the time so you got to keep that in mind I do when I read some of the quotes in the comments that people were posting on the YouTube short that that I gave yesterday which you can always find if you're if you're

following lactone cardinals on YouTube, be sure to check out the short section as well, where when there's breaking news or, you know, when we're doing post-game stuff, you're like, you're going to find 60-second videos there for you. But there were not a lot of happy people in the comments section. I'm going to read a few of these off for you if you don't mind. So, and I'm not going to give names, because I'm not calling people out because they have an opinion on it. But these are actual comments that I got when it was announced that Ali Marmel got the extension. Horrible. Needless to say, I am not a family. I have no faith in this ability or in his ability to manage this team. The Cardinals are committed to mediocrity. Unbelievable. This franchise has turned into a laughing

stock. At this point, I feel like they're trying to troll the fans. If not, they are completely inept. I thought Moseilock would tell you. take his puppet with him when he left. What is next? Are we signing Matt Carpenter to a two-year extension also? Don't say that. He might. He looked pretty good today. The cow will fly over the moon before the cardinals finish first in the division. Great. Here we go. Another three years of mediocrity. He has done nothing to deserve it. I thought this was the show me state. He needs to prove Remember when you can hold your head high as a Cardinal stand? Free of this type of other team nonsense.

Brutal timing for this. What a mess this has become. Apparently Yaddy meant so much more than we could ever imagine. Tell us what, how many more do I got here? One more. Tell us what he has done to earn an extension. If any of the rest of us failed at our jobs that bad last year, we would have been fired, not given a raise.

No reason to freak out. just realize that management for this team sucks. That's just the tip of the iceberg of some of the comments that I got yesterday. So if you're wondering, if you're alone feeling that Ali isn't, hasn't done enough to deserve this, you're not. There's a lot of people who feel that way. You're more alone if you think Ali deserve the extension. Now, personally, I see all the good of it.

I understand why they did it. And they're, again, they're taking blame for this. They're saying, dude, Ali didn't do anything wrong last year. It wasn't him. It wasn't his fault. It was all of this that caused these problems. And he was stuck with it. So keep that in mind that that's the way management views it.

That's the way the players view it. And again, they never gave up on Ali. So I mean, why would you push out a guy that everybody likes? if everybody sees eye to eye on how to fix this thing, right? So if the cardals go out this year and win 85 or more games, a lot of this will just go away. And everybody would be like, fine, fine, he's fine, I guess. But the taste of the poisonous 2023 season,

it's just still lingering in a lot of our mouths, you know, as fans, because we haven't gotten to see anything new yet from the regular season. So until that happens, until that is gone, It doesn't matter what the Cardinals do and say, right? They've got to show us on the field. They've got to win games on the field, and it's going to be a tough first month in season. So it's going to be rough early on. Speaking of on the field, the spring breakout game yesterday between the Cardinals and Marlins,

Miami won at three to two. Got to watch most of that, saw the top prospects play. Team Kens look great. Everybody was raving about Teen Kent yesterday. Two winnings, one hit, three strikeouts, scored Grispho. Sim Robbersa all through shutout innings. Max Radjik was the one who got touched up for a couple of runs on five hits, including a home run.

Their offense couldn't get much going yesterday for the prospects either. Zach Levinson hit a solo dinger, but the only other run came when Victor Scott walked with the bases loaded. But it was still fun to see them play, but not exactly the most exciting game, if I'm being honest. Then you had the Cardinals last night. they ended up losing. I did not get a chance to watch much of that game at all.

Got to listen a little bit to today's game. They ended up winning today by the score of 8 to 5. Last night's game, Stephen Matt's giving up the home run was really the big story in that one where, you know, it's Matt's working on some things and made a bad pitch. It made a bad pitch and they burnt him. And, you know, you're hoping he's just, he's better by the time the season starts. but at least he's healthy. I know, I just keep saying that, right? And then today's game,

8 to 5 win for the Cardinals over the Washington Nationals. Miles Michaelis, he ends up going six innings today, two runs, seven heads. He only strikes out two. He does walk one. What? Miles Michaelis walk somebody? That's unheard of it.

Anyway, ERA skyrockets to 2.25. He's looked really, really good this spring. Andrew Kittridge, 10 years. Another shutout inning. Ryan Fernandez, who, you know, we talked about at the beginning of this episode. Now probably easily has a slide. I thought he probably would anyway.

As a Rule 5 guy where if they weren't going to keep him on the Major League roster, they got to offer him back to Boston. And he got touched up a bit today. Three earned runs, three hits, two dingers. Riley O'Brien, though, we love this guy, don't we? One inning, two hits, no runs. No strikeouts. but ERA at 1.29 on the spring so far.

I wish MLB the show loved him. He doesn't exist on there for some reason. I have no idea why. Matt Carpenter, two hits and two ribbies today. Thomas and Jacey, two more hits. He's got that average of 361. Dylan Carlson, O for three. Not good.

Mason Wend, two for four today. So a win's a win. And there was some good things in there. They turned three double plays today. I mean, that's cool. So, I don't know, we're getting down to the nitty gritty here. The competition for whoever it's going to be in center field, I still think it's going to be Dylan Carlson. I don't think, no matter what Victor Scott does, I don't think they're going to have the marbles to keep them up.

But I was wrong about Walker last year. So, anyhow, we got to wrap this up today. Thank you for making locks on Cardinals, your first listen every day. If you haven't already, do me a solid. Give me a follow on Twitter X at L.O. underscore Cardinals and at J.D. Sports Radio. Please like and subscribe on YouTube and help our channel and love for the Cardinals grow. 9,250 subscribers, I think we're at. So we're getting there. We're getting ready to make that push towards 10,000. I was hoping to get there by opening day. It doesn't look like that's going to happen.

But if you're somebody who is a religious Cardinals fan and you come by and stop by this lockdown Cardinals podcast each and every day, do me a solid. like, subscribe on YouTube. Helps our channel grow. You guys are the best fans in baseball for a reason. And I will see you next time on Locktown Cardinals. Have a good one.