Cardinals: Ken Rosenthal sheds light on Oli Marmol-Tyler O’Neill feud

The Cardinals drama after manager Oli Marmol benched Tyler O’Neill over poor base running effort may be a sign of other issues under the surface.

All is not well in St. Louis where infighting between manager Oli Marmol and outfielder Tyler O’Neill grabbed recent headlines.

It started on Tuesday when O’Neill was tagged out at the plate while not exactly putting on the jets as a baserunner. The manager called him out after the game.

Then Marmol sat O’Neill down on Wednesday. There’s a dispute over whether or not he was benched. The player claimed it was a scheduled off day but the manager’s comments suggested O’Neill wasn’t living up to the Cardinals’ standard.

Either way, it’s clear Marmol and O’Neill are not on the same page.

“These conversations could have been had in-house and not gotten out on the loose like they have. Should’ve been handled a little differently, in my opinion,” O’Neill told the media.

But Marmol putting this out in front of the press feels like the point, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.

Ken Rosenthal’s comments shed light on Oli Marmol-Tyler O’Neill feud

https://twitter.com/FoulTerritoryTV/status/1644105202151161856

Rosenthal noted that O’Neill has dealt with injury issues and may have been protecting himself rather than failing to give the necessary effort on the play. And he acknowledged that throwing O’Neill under the bus for one questionable instance of baserunning feels like overkill. Which is exactly why it feels like there’s more going on.

“What we don’t know here is if there is anything else going on behind the scenes and whether there was a reason Oli Marmol felt compelled to do this publically,” Rosenthal said. “By and large that isn’t done today. Guys do not like to be called out publically. They do not like to be embarrassed. But who knows maybe there was something that led up to this that forced or caused Ole Marmol to think ‘okay let’s take this public, lets make people understand where we’re coming from here.’ I don’t know the answer to that. We don’t know exactly what was going on behind the scenes but it seems to me there might be more to it.”

If Joe Schmo said something like that, it wouldn’t necessarily mean much. But when an insider like Rosenthal speculates in that direction, it feels like a parallel to Marmol’s position. There’s something behind it.

Of course, O’Neill is an important piece in the Cardinals organization, so getting things right behind the scenes and in front of the cameras is critical. How Marmol and O’Neill react from here on out is the real story.