Could 2027 end up being the season where the Cardinals decide what they really have in Oli Marmol?
St. Louis just turned in a year that was better than a lot of people expected.
The club won 77 games, piled up plenty of moments for the fan base, and generally looked a year ahead of schedule. Even with that progress, the bigger question hasn’t gone away: Is Oliver Marmol the right manager for this team?
His résumé doesn’t offer a clean answer. Marmol is 402-408 in his career, and the Cardinals have now spent five years losing in the Lou.
That said, some of the frustration around him may be fueled by recency bias. Joe Torre and Ken Boyer both finished with losing records as Cardinals skippers, too.
Neither man was perfect in the dugout, but neither was a disaster, either.
The pressure still feels real because St. Louis is drifting into territory the franchise isn’t used to. If the Cardinals miss the playoffs again in 2027, that would make it five straight seasons without October baseball.
That kind of stretch is hard to square with a club that’s built around the expectation of playing deep into the fall. At some point, talent stops being the only conversation, and the organization has to decide whether a shake-up is needed.
The Yankees offer one example of how quickly that pressure can build. New York has lived in a strange middle ground since its last World Series title in 2009, bouncing between championship expectations and Wild Card results. Because of that, fans have pushed for the firing of longtime manager and former player Aaron Boone.
Boone’s numbers are far better than Marmol’s - he is 790-675 as Yankees manager - but that hasn’t kept him from taking heat in New York. The Yankees just announced that Boone will return on a one-year deal, which puts him in a clear prove-it spot.
The question for St. Louis is whether Marmol is about to land in the same situation.
The 2027 Cardinals could become a checkpoint for what comes next, with 2028 and 2029 looking like the seasons when the club is aiming to take a real swing at perennial contention. If Marmol can’t keep the team moving forward, and the Cardinals backslide instead, then a change becomes a real possibility.
There is also the larger organizational picture to keep in mind. Former POBO John Mozeliak is looking for a new manager for the Angels, and Albert Pujols’ name has been mentioned in rumors.
If No. 5 ended up in Los Angeles again instead of St. Louis, it would feel almost poetic in the worst way.
Still, the Cardinals are not at the point where they have to force a move just to make one. They remain some distance from true contention, and jumping at a World Series manager now might be premature.
Marmol has worked with uneven talent throughout his time in charge, but that doesn’t exempt him from expectations. If the Cardinals don’t feel like he is pushing the team in the right direction, the safest move may be to reset before the competition catches up to them.
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Griffins appeal is pretty straightforward for a club trying to improve without overspending: he gave Cleveland a combined 3.60 ERA in 31 starts and helped the Guardians get to the postseason. For a Cardinals team looking for a more affordable path to rotation depth, that profile makes him the kind of fit who could make sense on a one- or two-year deal, even if the broader market still has to shake out. [Read more 🡒]