Monday night was one of those instances where a great manager can make all the difference. The San Diego Padres were battling with the New York Yankees late before a critical moment occurred: Manager Mike Shildt and All-Star infielder Fernando Tatis Jr. were ejected for arguing. In a fit of rage, Shildt, threw his glasses into the air, sending a message to his ball club to just go get it done, boys!
This incident ignited a fire inside all of San Diego that we all wish we could ever get out of a blink-182 set. "Say it ain't so, I will not go down quietly," had to have been the motto for the Friars on Monday night. The team rallied with two outs in the eighth inning to get past the Yankees, 4-3. Whether it be Tatis Jr., the reincarnation of Tony Gwynn in Luis Arraez, everybody on this team loves this guy.
“I love Mike Shildt,” Arraez said afterward. “He supports his players. When I saw that thing, I said: ‘We’ll come back.’”
Shildt knows the exact pulse of his contending ball club, and what will get them to play their best on any given night. While the Padres have cooled off a bit after their blistering start, they are still an impressive 23-11 on the season. This has them only half a game back of the hated division rival Los Angeles Dodgers. The NL West is loaded this season, but only team one can win the division.
All the while, the St. Louis Cardinals seem to be stuck in the mud with Shildt's successor, Oli Marmol.
For more news and rumors, check out MLB Insider Robert Murray’s work on The Baseball Insiders podcast, subscribe to The Moonshot, our weekly MLB newsletter, and join the discord to get the inside scoop between now and the MLB offseason.
Mike Shildt is thriving, while Oli Marmol is merely surviving in St. Louis
Throughout most of my life, the Cardinals have been the better operation in the Senior Circuit over the Padres. We are talking about a team that has won more World Series than anyone not named the Yankees; San Diego, meanwhile has yet to claim the Commissioner's Trophy even a single time. But over the last few years, I see a paradigm shift happening.
For better or worse, the Padres have opted to spend like a big-money franchise. St. Louis seems like a team that continually fails to live up to expectations. In time, the Cardinals will get it right, but I get the sense that they need to hit the reset button at some point, top-down. Great organizations lose their way every know and then. The best ones eventually find it; it is in their DNA.
What I think people fail to realize the most in the day and age of analytics is it comes down to people. A baseball manager may not carry the clout or cachet of a general manager sitting in his ivory tower, but he has to be a man of the people to keep his job. Yes, it is about implementing and executing a sound strategy, but it is much easier to get buy-in when you have guys playing hard for you every day.
“You can see what kind of team we are, man,” Tatis Jr. said after San Diego's win on Monday. “Everyone has each other’s back over here.”
Shildt may have gotten a raw deal in St. Louis, but when one door closes, another one shall open up. And now the Cardinals are left wondering what might have been.