St. Louis Cardinals: The time to fire Mike Matheny is NOW

The St. Louis Cardinals are all but NOT going to the postseason yet again. In addition, since his arrival, the Cardinals have suffered under Mike Matheny getting worse and worse each season.

The St. Louis Cardinals MUST make a decision about Mike Matheny and they really should make it now (or yesterday preferrably). We all know that the St. Louis Cardinals have been on a downward trajectory since Matheny took the helm despite his early success– these were Tony La Russa teams anyway.

We fans have watched as our St. Louis Cardinals have floundered under poor management. We have watched as Matheny’s miserable management of the bullpen has lost us good arms in the way of Seth Maness, Trevor Rosenthal, and Seung-hwan Oh all thanks to overuse.

Worse still, we have watched as player after player “chooses” to play elsewhere so that they can save themselves from playing for the “leader of men.” In other words, Matheny’s own motto is one of his undoing.

To pile insult upon injury, Matheny is struggling with personal issues. This is something about which I wrote before this season even began. In short, Matheny owes millions in failed real estate investments.

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Enter then the explosive upstart that is Stubby Clapp in Memphis who has lead HIS men to a PCL championship and will play in the minor league title game on Tuesday night. Clapp, a fan favorite, is quickly gathering steam and the St. Louis Cardinals should act fast or else they may just lose a gem to an organization who is ready for this energy at the MLB level.

All of these things have come together to form a perfect storm to see Matheny exit. All of these things point directly to Matheny “exiting stage right.” All of these things are viable and justifiable reasons for the St. Louis Cardinals organization to cut its losses and to cut them now.

And yet… I’m afraid that all of these things will be ignored and the organization will once again point to Matheny’s success in September as a reason to keep him employed. I’m afraid that all of these reasons will be ignored and the organization will point to the number of injuries to key players as excuses for Matheny’s inability to coach and win. Coach and win: both areas of weakness and failure in the Matheny regime.

Funny enough, the follow tweet sounds really, really good to me:

I wonder how many of us would need to petition to get this to happen? I wonder how quickly Clapp could make it to Cincinnati?

Next: Vesting options offer solutions

The 2018 St. Louis Cardinals need this organization to do something before the end of the season if they ever hope to land the big bat, and big arm, and big fielder, and repaired pen that they so desperately need. I fear that no action will lead these “bigs” to be big elsewhere.