The news broke a little more than an hour ago and came as a great shock to this reporter. Mike Shildt, who has just come off a 90-win season and a trip to the MLB Postseason has been fired as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. The news first reported by CBS Sports and was confirmed by ESPN in a tweet from baseball columnist Jeff Passan. The news next made to the St. Louis Post Dispatch and was reported by top baseball beat writer Derrick Goold. The St. Louis Cardinals website reported the news at a little before 2 O’Clock Central Daylight Time.
The reason given by the team for Shildt’s dismissal was “philosophical differences” as quoted by Cardinals’ President of Baseball operations John Mozeliak.
Putting things into historical perspective, Shildt ended his managerial tenure with the Birds on the Bat with a regular season record of 252-199 for a .559 winning percentage. A winning percentage comparable with Johnny Keane, Rogers Hornsby, Gabby Street and Frankie Frisch and actually better than Red Schoendienst, White Herzog AND even Tony La Russa. In each of his three FULL seasons as Cardinal skipper (including the truncated season of 2020), he piloted the Cards to the postseason, but the Cards advanced to the NLCS only once and finished with a total record of 4 wins and 9 defeats.
Fan reaction on social media has been mixed. There are some that think the Cardinals made a mistake and there are others that think the team is doing the right thing. A press conference is taking place at the moment, but that still hasn’t stopped the citizens of Cardinal Nation from putting in their two cents and hazarding a guess as to who the next Cardinal skipper will be. Some of the of the guesses that have come in include Jose (“The Secret Weapon”) Oquendo (a former Cardinals player and coach), a fan favorite and a two-time manager of the Puerto Rican team in the World Baseball Classic and Richard (“Stubby”) Clapp, a longtime Cardinals’ coach and minor league manager who represented Canada twice each in the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic. One fan even suggested that Willie McGee, a fan favorite and two-time National League Batting Champion be given some consideration. Still another fan suggested former Cardinal infielder/outfielder and another fan favorite Skip Schumaker. There was even another fan that chimed in on Matt Holliday’s behalf.
