Oli Marmol puts Cardinals poor sportsmanship on full display with spiteful Cubs revenge

The Chicago Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-3, on Saturday afternoon to clinch the No. 4 seed in the National League and home field advantage in the Wild Card round. It has not been the smoothest of seasons for Craig Counsell's club, but 91-70 and a guaranteed series opener at Wrigley Field is far from disappointing.

That said, many Cubs fans were... irritated, to say the least, by a rather curious decision made from Cardinals manager Oli Marmol in the eighth inning of Saturday's affair. With a runner on third and two outs, Cubs first baseman Michael Busch sauntered up to home plate four-for-four with two home runs, a triple and a double. He was a single shy of hitting for the cycle and padding Chicago's lead even further.

Rather than letting Busch hack it in a lost game, at the tail end of a lost season, Marmol stood at the mouth of the dugout with a slight grin as he intentionally walked the Cubs first baseman. Naturally, the crowd let him hear it — and Busch was visibly displeased.

Is there a "baseball reason" to walk Busch in this spot? Yeah, sure. He was 4-for-4 with two homers and four extra-base hits. Busch pummeled the Cardinals all night and four runs is not exactly an oceanic margin on the scoreboard. There was a strategic explanation for what Marmol did.

But in reality, the Cardinals are eliminated from postseason contention. There was no real benefit to winning the game, aside from morale and self-respect. That's not to say St. Louis shouldn't try to win, but how about a little bit of spine? The cycle club is an exclusive list. Sometimes you need to do what's best for the sport, not what's best for your team in a pointless, late-September matinée. Go get Busch out on strikes. Get him to pop it up. Keep him from the cycle organically. Just handing him a free pass to avoid potential embarrassment — and to keep him from the record books — is super lame. Sorry, but that's the cold, hard truth.

And frankly, it all feels more than a little bit petty.

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Oli Marmol took out his frustrations on Cubs' Michael Busch

This is not the season Cardinals fans wanted. It's probably right in line with expectations — St. Louis is an old, expensive roster that consistently falls short of the competition. The Cardinals, now 78-83, aren't unwatchable. They aren't terrible. Just sort of mediocre, and not nearly good enough to keep pace with Chicago and Milwaukee in a challenging Central division.

Next season begins a long overdue rebuild under John Mozeliak's successor, Chaim Bloom. But for now, the Cards are putting the finishing touches on another season of pure, undiluted monotony. St. Louis has developed an annoying habit of just hanging around the middle of the pack with zero upward or downward mobility.

Busch in particular has tortured St. Louis all season. Busch has has a .467 average and 1.732 OPS with nine home runs in 11 games against the Cardinals in 2025. Those are just comical numbers, and no doubt part of the reason Marmol decided to just hand-wave him to first base in the eighth inning. This wasn't a one-off performance for the Cubs leadoff hitter. He has been punking the Cardinals for months. Factor in St. Louis' relative lack of success compared to Chicago, and it's not hard to understand why Marmol arrived at the decision to be petty. Who wouldn't feel that urge? It was a metaphorical middle finger.

While Marmol's decision can be justified from a pure baseball standpoint and understood on an emotional level, that doesn't make it any less cowardly. I'm not here to preach unwritten rules or wring my hands over the sanctity of the sport, but c'mon dude. You let Busch swing for the cycle in that spot. You need to step up and stop him, not take the easy way out.

Some Cubs fans are handling this rationally.

Others... not so much.

You can find far worse reactions on X in your own time. But yes, this was a deeply uncool and karmically bankrupt decision from Marmol, the sort that reverberates through time and haunts you for years to come. When the Cardinals' 2026 season invariably turns sour, we will look back on this moment and think, "maybe they deserve it."