Despite being the youngest manager in the league last season, Oli Marmol’s St. Louis Cardinals had their worst season in a long time. After finishing in the NL Central’s last place for the first time since 1990, the 37-year old has come under intense fire.

Over the past two seasons, the St. Louis Cardinals have had retirement tours for Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, and Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals then signed Matt Carpenter last week, and re-signed former Cardinal Lance Lynn a few weeks ago.

This is an obvious effort to bring leadership and culture to the Cardinals clubhouse. While having positive atmosphere from the players is important. the manager should be the one to set the tone. One issue Marmol had last year was his issues with players, and how public those issues were.

The St. Louis Cardinals have had an ongoing issue in the clubhouse — one that has been made exponentially worse by Marmol deciding to make the entire feud public for absolutely no reason.

Tyler O’Neill notably appeared to be fed up and went as far as to call out his manager in a pre-game media scrum last April.

“I came up through the minor leagues and into the big leagues playing hard, playing scrappy and that’s who I am. That’s my character and I don’t ever want anyone to take that away from me,” O’Neill told reporters back in late April.

“These conversations definitely could have been had in-house and not gotten out loose like they have. It should have been handled a little differently in my opinion but who’s to say.”

The public battle came after Marmol accused O’Neill of not hustling to home plate when the 27-year-old was gunned down by Atlanta Braves superstar right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr., a play that proved to be pivotal in the Cardinals’ eventual 4-1 loss to the Braves.

Marmol was hired due to his familiarity with the team, his ability to build relationships with players, and his penchant for inspiring players. Not for his experience as a manager. If so, it wasn’t the right choice. The results have led to a divisional title, but then getting swept in the Wild Card round, and the worst record in team history in the past 30 years.