MLB's Biggest Embarrassment: The Ongoing Collapse of 'The Cardinal Way'

The mood coming from the St. Louis Cardinals throughout 2023 has been one of dysfunction and distress, even bordering on panic.

Basically, the opposite of what you think of when you think of "The Cardinal Way."

This week's three-game win streak helped dispel some of the despair, but not to the point of inviting actual optimism. At 13-25, the Cardinals are off to their worst start in 98 years and at the very bottom of the National League standings.

According to FanGraphs, they've gone from being preseason favorites to win the NL Central to just a 22.2 percent chance of making the playoffs in any capacity. That's down from 67.4 percent on Opening Day, marking the single largest drop of any team.

Say this about the Cardinals' sudden propensity for losing after posting winning records in all but one season between 2000 and 2022: they haven't made it boring.

After picking a fight with umpire C.B. Bucknor in spring training, manager Oli Marmol picked another fight with one of his own players, outfielder Tyler O'Neill, in April. Then there was the sudden demotion of erstwhile rookie sensation Jordan Walker and, most recently, the scapegoating of $87.5 million catcher designated hitter Willson Contreras.

Never mind just operatic. This is soap-operatic stuff, and it couldn't be more out of tune with how the Cardinals usually operate.

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What Even Is the Cardinal Way?

At this point, "The Cardinal Way" is easier to understand as a meme than as an organizational philosophy. To borrow from former manager Mike Matheny, it's shorthand for the particular "holier than thou" brand that the team has cultivated for the better part of the century.

And yet "The Cardinal Way" is indeed an organizational philosophy. And one that's in writing, no less, as the organization itself has a 117-page book on what it's all about.

There's surely some overlap between what's in there and what got into Howard Megdal's 2016 book, The Cardinals Way: How One Team Embraced Tradition and Moneyball, which covered how owner Bill DeWitt Jr. and an army of modern executives evolved a player development machine whose main progenitors include Branch Rickey and George Kissell.

"The Cardinal Way" can also be understood as an attitude. General manager John Mozeliak has spoken about seeking "character" in players, who in turn are expected to go about their business in a holistic way. "Physically prepared, mentally prepared and honestly spiritually" was how former center fielder Harrison Bader put it in 2020.

If we were to venture a definition of the non-meme form of "The Cardinal Way," we'd say it's about harmony. There's always a plan and everything is always going according to it. Cool. Calm. Collected. Cardinals.

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It's Been a Slow-Moving Breakdown

And for many years, it worked.

Though the Cardinals initially had ups and downs after DeWitt bought the team in 1995, the 2000 season marked the beginning of a long reign as the envy of the National League. The Los Angeles Dodgers produced more regular-season wins between then and 2022, but the Cardinals more than made up the difference in the playoffs with two World Series championships, two league pennants and an NL-high 69 playoff games.

But even before it finally shattered, you could hear the facade cracking before this year.

It's not just the club's diminishing returns in the playoffs. Mozeliak throwing Dexter Fowler under the bus in 2018? That was weird. Shildt's unexpected and apparently heartbreaking firing in 2021? Also weird. Yadier Molina seeming to check out in 2022? Weirder still. The Cardinals replacing Molina, a nine-time Gold Glover, with Contreras, a zero-time Gold Glover? Weirdest still.

There's a pattern of escalation apparent here, so perhaps it was inevitable that the weird stuff would start happening at a fever pitch like it has this year. And in case you can't tell from the team's record, the breakdown is also happening on the field.

For starters, the player development machine has blown a gasket. Whereas the Cardinals typically got around 50 percent of their total wins above replacement between 2000 and 2022 from players 28 and under—i.e., players whose ages fall under the MLB average—that figure is down to 22.0 percent in 2023.

Middle infielders Tommy Edman and Brendan Donovan are having down years, as is every homegrown outfielder not named Lars Nootbaar. On the pitching side, one-time Cy Young Award vote-getter Jack Flaherty and fireballing reliever Jordan Hicks have ERAs in the 6.00s.

If the other consistent on-field hallmark of "The Cardinal Way" was outstanding run prevention, that, too, has gone kaput.

The Cardinals ranked in the National League top five in runs allowed per game 14 times between 2000 and 2022. This year they rank 12th, and that's as much bad defense as bad pitching.

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Is There Any Fixing This?

All this is to say that the plight of this year's Cardinals is bigger than Contreras. And they should know as much now more than ever. The club's ERA has actually risen from April to May, wherein Andrew Knizner has done most of the catching.

If it's a question of who the Cardinals should have scapegoated instead of Contreras, the obvious answer is Marmol.

Even setting aside his clashes with Bucknor and O'Neill, the Cardinals simply aren't doing as well as they should be under the second-year skipper. There's no single reason for that, though his baffling commitment to using Hicks in high-leverage spots and his suboptimal lineup construction are two big ones.

Granted, firing Marmol would not fix all of the Cardinals' problems. To pick just one out of a hat, another reason the club's run prevention has been so bad is that the starters just don't have good stuff. And that matters, despite Flaherty's recent insistence to the contrary.

But if the Cardinals were to fire Marmol and promote, say, bench coach Joe McEwing or first base coach Stubby Clapp, they could hope for the same effect that propelled the Philadelphia Phillies after they switched out Joe Girardi for Rob Thomson last June. If nothing else, one can imagine the young guys benefiting from taking orders from a different voice.

Yet Marmol being shown the door feels like the kind of thing that if it was going to happen, it would have already happened by now.

It's not hard to decipher why it hasn't. Whereas Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski wasn't the one who originally hired Girardi, Marmol was hand-picked by DeWitt and Mozeliak barely more than a year ago. Given that they effectively sabotaged an $87.5 million investment in lieu of axing Marmol, they must still think they picked the right guy.

Barring any further major changes, it's hard to imagine how the Cardinals are going to improve on a course that FanGraphs plots for a 79-win season. That might even be generous, yet it would still lead to a postseason-less October while also marking the club's first losing season since 2007.

If not to abandon it all together, such an outcome would be a good excuse to do literal rewrites on "The Cardinal Way."

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.