The St. Louis Cardinals plan to hire Oliver Marmol as their new manager, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Passan on Sunday night, confirming an earlier report.
Marmol, 35, served as St. Louis’ bench coach the past two seasons and is extremely well-regarded within the organization. He was the favorite from the start of the search, and is well-immersed in the culture of the organization, having worked his way up since being drafted by St. Louis in 2007.
Marmol will be the youngest active manager in Major League Baseball and the youngest to manage any team on Opening Day since Eric Wedge with Cleveland in 2003. He will be the youngest to manage the Cardinals since Marty Marion in 1951 and is younger than eight Cardinals’ players who appeared in a game this past season, including Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright.
Despite a team-record 17-game winning streak that carried St. Louis to an MLB wild-card berth, Mike Shildt was fired as manager earlier this month, following the team’s playoff loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak cited “philosophical differences” to explain Shildt’s dismissal at the time. He declined to expand on those differences, saying the move was “something that popped up recently.”
Mozeliak noted that Shildt was heading into the final year of his contract but said that wasn’t the sole reason for parting ways. Shildt had signed a three-year extension after the 2019 season.
“All I can say is where we felt the team was going, we were struggling to get on the same page,” Mozeliak said. “With him having one year remaining on his contract, we could have gone into 2022 having that over him, and we just decided that internally it would be best to separate now and take a fresh look as we head into a new season.”
At the time of the dismissal, Mozeliak declined to discuss possible replacements but said there were plenty of internal candidates. Enter Marmol, who was named the Cardinals’ first-base coach in 2017 before taking over as bench coach in 2019.
“As I said before, 2021 was a real success and something that, for all of us that were part of the organization, we take tremendous pride in,” Mozeliak said at the time. “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. 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.”
The Athletic first reported the Cardinals’ decision on Sunday. The team will have a news conference on Monday at 11 a.m. ET.
ESPN Staff Writer Jesse Rogers contributed to this report.
Source: www.espn.com