Willie McGee is part of the 2018 St Louis Cardinals

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7PmE9-W4AEl1qz.jpg:small

bernie miklasz on twitter:

"The lethargic and messy baseball aside, and crumbling player relations aside, I can share this: management was not happy with Matheny’s quotes in @markasaxon piece in @TheAthletic (1/2)"

"As I wrote for @TheAthleticSTL Friday, management uncomfortable with Matheny’s expressed zeal for old-school tough guy stuff and referring to today’s game as "soft" … felt (2/3)"

"That (3/3) whenever Matheny gets on the soapbox with old-school preaching that’s a huge turnoff to young players, it reinforced team’s rep as uptight, stressed, humorless and not a fun place to play."

"That’s why I was astonished by the attacks on @markasaxon ; without Matheny running his mouth and all but bragging over having Bud Norris being his enforcer/snitch, Saxon had much less to build his piece around. Today’s players are different. This manager never got that."

"If you go back and read the reporting on why Joe Girardi was sacked by the Yankees, you wouldn’t be so quick to assume he’s the right guy in STL. The ability to communicate-connect with young players, and all kinds of players, will be a priority in choosing next STL manager"

Also very good - got me to download the app —
Miklasz: In the end, Mike Matheny simply never delivered on the promises that led to his hiring in the first place https://theathletic.com/432508/2018/07/15/miklasz-in-the-end-mike-matheny-simply-never-delivered-on-the-promises-that-led-to-his-hiring-in-the-first-place/

congratulations Cardinal fans

the only drawback to all of this is that the cardinals failed to call up triple-a manager STUBBY CLAPP

He’s a manager now???!!!!

The Cardinals’ players are now “on notice” after the team fired manager Mike Matheny on Saturday, Mark Saxon of The Athletic tweets. If the Cardinals (47-46) don’t turn things around during the coming weeks under interim manager Mike Shildt, there may be “sweeping changes” to their roster, per Saxon. St. Louis’ front office, for its part, “has pined for years to be a seller and stock up for the future,” Saxon writes.

the front office is dad now, and dad is mad

if the 2018 season is going to amount to anything, we'll find out in the next 2 weeks. a 5-game series against the cubs, 3 against the reds, another 3 against the cubs, then the trade deadline. i'd think they'd have to win at least 6 of 8 against the cubs in order to have a fighting chance this season, and they haven't exactly stepped it up against quality opponents the last three years this season

nice little game from carp

He has been on fire for a really long time

Bit of a gap but 6 HRs in his last 4 games.

16 total bases today

brett cecil getting a pep talk mound visit in a 16-2 game lol

carpenter in 56 games since 5/16:

.346/.435/.738, 20 HR, 24 2B, 33 BB, 38 RBI, 50 R

only mookie is within 80 points of his 1.174 OPS. only 12 players are within 200 points of it

yadier molina is the slowest person who has ever moved

Ozuna just checked his swing and the ump signaled he’d been hit by the pitch on his arm, Ozuna waved him off and said it was the bat, then grounded into a double play.

twice in this series the cardinals' manager has intentionally walked rizzo to get to bryant. one of those times there was only one out.

at least it's better than rock paper scissors

pic.twitter.com/ff9kJcoaCa

— 📼 (@VanHicklestein) July 22, 2018

damn, now Bud won’t make it out of the next road trip alive.

― omar little, Saturday, July 14, 2018 11:32 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

honestly (and i felt this way the last 2 seasons especially) i would rather see them go down in flames a little earlier this year and be sellers at the trade deadline rather than hanging on all year only to end up a few games out by the end. i don't blame bud norris for where they are this season since he's been really good all year. i blame greg holland. i hate his face and he sucks

shit face holland dfa'd, man with a good name dakota hudson will take his roster spot

As Cras references here, the tension never really abated between Tommy and the front office. Recently he asked for an expensive piece of exercise equipment and became unhappy when the team didn’t provide it. Many small clashes, I’m told by source. TB has been on him a long time. https://t.co/L9FiZ49Rt7

— Mark Saxon (@markasaxon) July 31, 2018

i'm gonna miss watching tommy pham.

it sure has been a tough year for st louis. 3 years without playoffs! can anyone else possibly understand what that feels like to have to watch?!

guessing pham's pissed that he won't get to play against the cardinals -- he seems like the kind of guy who still burns with hatred for the JV baseball coach who once moved him down in the order

yeah, he definitely plays with a chip on his shoulder. for the most part that's worked well!

pham is hard to project, i think. but there's a decent chance this goes down as a criminally terrible trade for the cardinals

impostor

Lance Lynn kept the pinstripes, lost the beard ... pic.twitter.com/hjvggSTbYQ

— Ryan Fagan (@ryanfagan) August 1, 2018

from the EW FB group:

Al Hrabosky, on the Cardinals broadcast. "I don't believe in launch angle... Launch angle means fly outs to me". As the words were leaving his mouth, Matt Carpenter hits another home run. Never change, Al.

He is one of the dumbest men in professional sports

adolis garcia making his debut in CF tonight

part of me thinks carpenter embraces this hashtag because it could eventually lead to a lucrative new salsa company

Another big series win! Here we come... back at it Friday in Kansas City! Proud to be a redbird... #ItsGottaBeTheSalsa 🍅🔥🌶

— Matt Carpenter (@MattCarp13) August 9, 2018

looks like mike shildt, like matheny, doesn't know how to say no to molina. yadi is starting his 18th straight game tonight, apparently a record for catchers 35 or older.

Molina's knees must be made from metal or something. Both the Pudge's (Fisk & Irod) caught alot of games late in their career, so I could see him hanging around for a while longer.

his cup is made of metal, now, but i don't know about his knees. but yeah, he's something else. it seems ridiculously risky to play a catcher 18 games in a row at pretty much any age, let alone 36, but he's hit .313/.345/.488 (wRC+ 126) during that span, hitting consistently pretty much the whole time, so what do i know

sorry, "ridiculously risky" is a little too much there. i guess i just mean "shortsighted"

regardless of who wins, this has been an unbelievably tense last three innings

2018 with Matheny: .505
2018 without Matheny: .640

mgr of the year!

https://i.imgur.com/GOL2Sjj.gif

posting this here again because it's still making me lol this morning

seven-game winning streak, only 4 games back

though five of those seven were against the marlins and the royals

Yeah, story of the last few years - beating up on bad teams, mediocre against the good ones. Still, if they were going to bust into a 7-game winning streak, now is the time to do it! A big part of the streak has been carpenter and the bullpen (who have gone from closing game after game to being unstoppable since the all-star break).

this is about as wild as the cardinals get

After being hit, the trainers wanted to see if @MattCarp13's hand was ok. He tested his strength by trying to open a jar of salsa. He opened it!

"If I can open it, I can play!" - Matt Carpenter #ItsGottaBeTheSalsa 🔥 pic.twitter.com/fx3wgmdxum

— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) August 16, 2018

https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2018/8/19/17755916/system-sundays-the-cards-emerging-star-crop

cautiously optimistic

optimistically optimistic

i knew things would be better after matheny, but jesus

, but jesus

unintentional irony there

shildt, man

The #Stlcards will announce that Mike Shildt is now their manager, stripping away the interim title

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) August 28, 2018

✓

shildt likes to keep his eyes in the shade and i respect that

https://i.imgur.com/bT7ImBL.jpg