STL Cardinals’ ideal Oli Marmol replacement almost seems too obvious

If the St. Louis Cardinals do decide to part ways with Oli Marmol, their replacement for him could be a familiar, obvious face.

The St. Louis Cardinals have now lost eight straight games, and the no-brainer free agent signing of the winter has already been moved away from the position he was signed to play. While there are fingers to point within the field of play for now, manager Oliver Marmol may not be long in St. Louis at this rate.

After such a horrid start, management will want to make changes, and no sport benefits more from the mid-season change of someone steering the ship than baseball. Heck, the Phillies fired Joe Girardi mid-season last year and made it to the World Series by the end of the year. Turnarounds are possible when you make the right cuts.

Marmol could be gone soon. We’ve already looked at a few replacements for him, but one that we didn’t include might almost be too obvious.

Willson Contreras effortlessly explained why Yadier Molina would be a good Oli Marmol replacement option

Saturday’s story was all about Willson Contreras and his failure as a catcher so far this year. His framing hasn’t been good and he’s already committed nearly as many errors behind the plate as he did all of 2022 with the Cubs.

Some, though, think Contreras is being used as a scapegoat.

In talking about the positional change, Contreras mentioned that a familiar face, Yadier Molina, who retired and created the opening for Contreras in St. Louis at catcher, told him that pitchers weren’t executing pitches.

It’s a more convicting reason for why things haven’t gone right with the pitching staff than we’ve heard from Marmol thus far, truthfully. Fans joked that if Molina is still this invested in the team, maybe he should manage the team.

At this point, is it that much of a stretch? If Marmol were fired, the manager they find for the rest of this year would be an interim one. There’s no long-term sign-on for Molina if he doesn’t want to do this forever. It’s a low pressure way for him to test out the waters, because things can’t get much worse than this.

On the organization’s side, they’re last in the division with very little to lose. Sure, there may be more qualified options available, but now is the time to get creative.

Yadier is sorely missed. Maybe they can benefit from bringing him back in a creative way this season. Marmol, clearly, has not worked out.