Surprise firing of Shildt not about decisions as Cardinals manager

A manager of a baseball team is not much different than any other middle management employee at any company, we just tend to care more about the decision-making process in baseball.

Mike Shildt, it seems, did not see eye to eye with his boss and so on Thursday he was fired as the St. Louis Cardinals manager.

“While these decisions are difficult, both parties agreed that philosophical differences related to the direction of the organization brought us to this conclusion,” said Cardinals’ President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak in a statement. ”With just one year remaining on Mike’s contract, it was in everyone’s best interests that we address this now.”

It was reported that Shildt was “very shocked” as was anyone who heard the news.

Shildt was named National League Manager of the Year in 2019 and the Cardinals had just reached the postseason for a third straight year. To get there, the Cardinals won a club-record 17 straight games to overcome a stretch of injuries that derailed a promising start to the season.

The Cardinals were 252-199 (a .559 winning percentage better than Tony La Russa) under Shildt, who took over as interim manager when Mike Matheny was fired in 2018. Mozeliak took off the interim tag following a 41-28 record by the team. The following year the team reached the league championship series, losing to the Nationals.

Shildt was a company man, having been a scout and minor league manager with the organization over 18 years.

That ended with a phone call from Mozeliak.

The team asked Major League Baseball for permission to announce the move Thursday, before the Dodgers and Giants played their decisive playoff game, the Associated Press reported.

Mozeliak said he met with the coaching staff, including Shildt, on Friday, two days after the Cardinals lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL Wild Card playoff on a walk-off home run.

Of course Shildt’s last decision as manager of the Cardinals is immediately now under the microscope.

After a two-out walk in the bottom of the ninth with the game tied, Shildt brought in Alex Reyes to face the Dodgers’ Chris Taylor. Both were named to the All-Star team this summer and both had struggling during the second half of the season.

Reyes went from dominate closer that allowed just two home runs against 205 batters faced to seven allowed over the final 112 batters faced.

Taylor, meanwhile, had just seven hits since the end of August for a .121 average and hit only three home runs since end the of July. He was brought into the game in a double switch as a defensive substitute.

Shildt’s plan of having reliever Giovanney Gallegos pitch the ninth was derailed by a split fingernail, as reported by the Post-Dispatch, and lefty T.J. McFarland got two outs in the ninth before walking Cody Bellinger on a full count.

With a dangerous Mookie Betts on deck and his pitcher’s spot in the order due up fourth in the 10th, Shildt called for Reyes, who had struck out Taylor in both at-bats during the season. (Taylor had hit a home run against both Jack Flaherty and Miles Mikolas earlier in the season and doubled off Genesis Cabrera.)

This time, Reyes hung a 2-1 slider that Taylor sent into the left-field bleachers for a walk-off win.

After an injury-plagued summer knocked the team’s chances of making the playoffs to little and none, the front office gave Shildt not much to work with other than Wade LeBlanc, J.A. Happ, Jon Lester and McFarland while the Dodgers traded for Max Scherzer.

A month earlier, fans on social media were ready to fire Shildt for sitting both Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado during a series with the Dodgers in which the Cardinals lost the first two games. The pair got hot shortly thereafter, along with Harrison Bader, Tyler O’Neill and others, leading to a record winning streak.

“Any time you go on a 17-game winning streak and actually create history for your organization, it's something you take enormous pride in,” Mozeliak said Thursday. “A lot of times these decisions aren't based just on the season, more to the point it's directionally where we want to go.”

Like any company, a baseball team’s decisions are made with input from many sources — hitting and pitching coaches, player development and the general manager.

“One thing you’d want to make sure is everybody’s on the same page,” said Bill DeWitt Jr., the team’s chairman.

Mozeliak said, “we just felt we were at a place where we weren’t going to have a meeting of the minds.”

In other words, Shildt didn’t want to play ball.