Former Cardinals manager Mike Shildt — that still feels strange to type — took the high road.
No talking out of school, Shildt said Monday, while reading a statement he composed after he was fired by phone in surprising fashion last week.
Shildt thanked everyone, from the tip-top of the Cardinals organization, chairman Bill DeWitt Jr., to the too-often overlooked role players, including the clubbies and kitchen staff workers. He didn’t try to prove a point by leaving someone out. His 10-minute statement was drastically different from the announcement of his ejection, one lacking many signs of warmth from his bosses.
“Let’s move forward,” Shildt said.
I’d rather roll around in the ditch for just a little while longer.
Shildt provided some lines to overanalyze.
He heaped praise on bench coach Oliver Marmol. Was it an endorsement of his pick for the next manager or an understated jab at an ally who became a potential replacement? Hard to tell.
Shildt made sure to mention president of baseball operations John Mozeliak, then the general manager, entrusting Shildt, then the director of the Cardinals’ minor league spring training, with spearheading the strengthening of the Cardinals' farm system more than a decade ago. If there were whispers about Shildt losing track of the Cardinals’ draft-and-develop big picture, this came across like a fact check.
Shildt rolled out a great line about putting the organization over his personal career during his time with the team. The hint was left there, hanging. Some believe that approach contributed to his firing in the end.
Shildt forgot one thing. For his own sake, he should have peppered in some self-defense against a confusing narrative that seems to be developing against him. He's being painted by some as an anti-analytics manager. It just doesn't add up.
Shildt has taken arrows for referencing Matt Carpenter’s hard-hit rate as reasons to defend his plate appearances. He has used advanced defensive metrics to help improve what had become a league-worst defense when he was promoted in 2018. The Cardinals used more defensive shifts with Shildt in charge than they ever had in the past.
No one left in the modern major leagues is truly anti-analytics, and Shildt never really seemed to fit the description of someone who was trying to resist the changing tide. He was rolling with it. He had been for years.
Analytics is just a fancy word for information. Having differences about how information should be used does not make someone anti-information. Blending what is on the computer screen with living, breathing baseball players is the name of the game now. Disagreements about how the two are mixed happen every day. If Shildt was anti-analytics, he never would have lasted this long.
But the lack of information has increased speculation, and Cardinals fans are still owed a better explanation of why Shildt was fired. Mozeliak's "philosophical differences" label did not stick. Shildt's chance to clear up things Monday came and went with nothing more than bread crumbs offered as explanation. He was calm, cool and collected. To say he always was would be incorrect. Those both for and against the divorce are only letting little examples of the differences slip out. Combined together, they continue to paint a picture of a manager and Mozeliak's front office at odds, with confusion about where others on Shildt's coaching staff wound up in the end.
Monday's most telling moment could have been when Shildt thanked members of the organization, past and present, for the talks that shaped him as a baseball professional over the years.
“The conversations were full of wisdom, encouragement, accountability and, at times, some hard truths and tough love,” Shildt said. “At every turn, regardless of how challenging the conversations were, it was always about what is best for the Cardinals and the St. Louis Cardinals organization and maintaining the very high standards of the organization on and off the field.”
I am not so sure hard truths and tough love are very welcome in the Cardinals organization these days.
It is frowned upon by the brand to want more out of the Cardinals, to suggest they are slipping from a championship standard toward one that hovers beneath it, to point out that in the past decade there has been a replica of the Commissioner's Trophy erected at Ballpark Village but not a real one lifted by the team.
One point of tension has been made clear: Shildt was starting to nudge in ways he felt he could. It did him no favors.
The last interview Shildt gave before he got fired was to KSDK’s Frank Cusumano. During that interview, Shildt was asked how the Cardinals can get back to a World Series. His answer was telling. We heard similar variations of it from Shildt during the season, when he suggested the team was playing the best it could with what it had, a sign he wanted roster help.
“A lot of that will be handled by the front office,” Shildt answered. “That’s out of my pay grade, to some degree. I do feel like there are some things that those perennial — people call them super teams — have relative to how they are put together. But I will say this. How we are put together is pretty darn good. The pieces we have are pretty darn good.”
Pretty darn good. Left unsaid: What happened to great?
It's a hard thing, managing the modern Cardinals. You can win enough to hurt your job security by not winning a World Series, and you can hurt your job security by pushing too hard to close the gap with heavyweight contenders.
The next manager will have to walk the line better than the former one, but he could wind up benefitting from Shildt's willingness to push to the other side of it. That's if the message, while unwanted, was received.
