Almost any St. Louis Cardinals fan could tell you they feel the 2025 season slipping through their fingers, especially as the July 31 trade deadline is just over a week away. The exclamation point on that came on Wednesday afternoon at Coors Field in a rubber match with the MLB-worst Colorado Rockies as they failed to show any signs of life in a 6-0 loss. After tasting defeat, manager Oli Marmol tried to put on his brave face and be the tough presence the Cardinals might need to avoid bottoming out. Unfortunately, it's all probably too little, too late for him and St. Louis.
On the heels of the brutally sour loss and with the franchise's trade deadline direction likely hanging in the balance, Marmol didn't mince words after the game, telling Katie Woo of The Athletic that this was the Cardinals' "worst game we've played all year."
“Worst game we’ve played all year.” — Oli Marmol #STLCards https://t.co/tHUOdSMmLy
— Katie Woo (@katiejwoo) July 23, 2025
As a Red Sox fan, let me assure you that I'm familiar with the tough guy act that Marmol is trying to pull off here. After a tough loss, particularly one at an inopportune moment, Alex Cora is no stranger to calling out his players collectively and asking for more. The problem with that in this instance is that Marmol doesn't have nearly the caché and certainly not the World Series ring that Cora has to his credit.
And as tough as he tries to be, it won't help Marmol when the question of his future in St. Louis is brought to light come this offseason.
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Cardinals manager Oli Marmol looks like he can't save his job
At this point, there are two common denominators when it comes the persistent and frustrating underperformance in the Cardinals. One is John Mozeliak, who is already on his way out after this season and set to be replaced by Chaim Bloom as the head decision-maker in the front office. The other is Marmol.
He took up the post in 2022 and won the NL Central with 93 wins, but it's been a consistent disappointment since. The 2023 season was a disaster, but the 2024 campaign may have been more painful, taking one last ride with the Paul Goldschmidt-Nolan Arenado duo and riding that to an 83-79 record that wasn't good enough to get into the postseason out of the National League. Now, the roster is worse and, while they may have over-performed expectations in the first half of the season, the signs of them falling back to Earth are coming to fruition right now.
St. Louis needs a reset, tough guy act or not
Marmol has always been able to say the right things and act the part of a high-end MLB manager. What he hasn't been able to do is win baseball games. That's more important than putting on the right face for the media, after all. Some might even say it's the entire point of the job that he's supposed to be doing with the Cardinals.
As Mozeliak steps out and Bloom steps in, it frankly makes more sense than not if Marmol is lame-duck manager. The Cardinals need a fresh set of eyes and hands working on the organization at every level possible, including in the clubhouse. It's been four seasons and, outside of the first one — which we can now pretty clearly look at as less a construct of Marmol and more just a carryover from previous successes — it's been abysmal for fans in St. Louis.
It's time to drop the tough guy act, and by that we mean it's time for the Cardinals to drop the guy putting it on. It can only lead to a better future in The Lou.