Skip Schumaker’s exit post-mortem proves Cardinals never had a chance

The St. Louis Cardinals will not fire Oli Marmol, barring a winter surprise after the World Series. St. Louis has finished well behind the eventual NL Central winners in consecutive seasons, falling short of the limited expectations John Mozeliak and the Cards front office set for themselves.

You could say that Marmol is part of the problem, not part of the solution. He can often be brash with players, and in some cases he has even started drama with the media. That doesn’t seem like much of a leader to me, but I’m not an MLB manager either.

A possible replacement for Marmol if he were to leave would be former Marlins manager Skip Schumaker, who parted ways with the team due to philosophical differences. To summarize these differences, Schumaker wanted to win while the Marlins were content with not spending. That’s not a great match.

While St. Louis is willing to spend money to give Cardinals fans a winner, they are also an organization in turmoil. The front office is expected to be transferred from Mozeliak to Chaim Bloom in the coming year, and St. Louis has already fired its scouting director. Job security is not great at the moment and Bill DeWitt’s patience is running out. To be clear, that’s a good thing for Cardinals fans. It means DeWitt is willing to make changes. Still, those same changes likely would have eliminated any chance St. Louis had of signing Schumaker.

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According to Ken Rosenthal, when Schumaker left Miami, the Marlins drove his entire coaching staff out the door and fired a total of 70 staffers. That had to sting a bit, and he also sent a message to Schumaker. This guy needs some stability, even if it is with a franchise in the middle of a rebuild.

One such situation is the Chicago White Sox. The Sox were historically bad in 2024 and won’t get better anytime soon. It appears Chris Getz will trade Garrett Crochet this winter. The South Siders are literally running out of assets.

What the Sox can offer Schumaker is stability. Getz isn’t leaving anytime soon. The next manager should get a long-term contract as the White Sox are not an attractive franchise at the moment. Schumaker also has a connection to Tony La Russa, under whom he played and is an advisor to the team.

While the cards made sense in theory to Schumaker, the reality was far from set in stone.