St. Louis Cardinals: How the David Ross hiring affects the NL Central

The biggest rival of your St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs, hired David Ross as their new manager. How does that affect the rest of the NL Central?

After Joe Maddon left the St. Louis Cardinals rival, the Chicago Cubs, there was a lot of debate about who the Cubs would go after to replace the tasteful and prim Maddon helming the team.

This past week, they decided to hire David Ross. After proclaiming publicly that they want a voice that was more firm in the clubhouse, the move to Ross seems a little odd as his old nickname, “Grandpa Rossy,” and whimsical manner on the national broadcasts he has done seems like the opposite of a firm voice.

The truth is that nobody knows how this hiring will play out, but it is a very different hiring than what the normal case is. Ross could go out there and do a great job, but at first look, it’s questionable in my eyes.

Catchers moving to manage has worked out well historically, even without previous experience, but the biggest reason I question this move is that just three years ago, Ross was teammates with many of these players.

We have seen this before with our own Mike Matheny, Aaron Boone of the Yankees, and at least some with Craig Counsell of the Brewers. Boone had nine years in between managing and playing, Counsell had four years, and Matheny had eight years between his Cardinals career and managing hiring.

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Ross has just three, and the biggest thing is that the Cubs’ roster is wholly unchanged since his days as a backup catcher. In a rough estimate, there are 14 players out of the 25-man roster in 2016 that still were on the roster in 2019. Obviously that number may fall based on how the offseason goes for the Cubs, but that is still a large number.

Based off of Ross’ press conference and what was known about Ross in 2016, he was a leader of the team. That is necessary if he’s going to be the manager. What is unknown though is how much control he is going to have and how the leadership relationship will transfer when a players’ playing time is on the line.

The question is what will things be like when Ross goes to pull Lester, a player he has caught many times, in a game where Lester doesn’t want to leave? How will players react when Ross has to make the tough decision and bench a veteran that he used to play with? Will he play favorites and be too buddy-buddy with his old friends?

Will the players respect his authority or challenge it because they were just on the same team where Ross didn’t even start just three years ago. An amicable situation is definitely possible but you can’t deny that it’s a challenging situation that could’ve been avoided by hiring a different manager.

I will say that I’m very happy that the Cubs didn’t sign the great leader Joe Girardi or poach someone like Stubby Clapp from the Cardinals system.

As Cardinals fans, the reaction should be to be happy about this. I think there were more dangerous options out there and the Cubs went with a guy they knew well. In the press conference where the Cubs introduced Ross, they made it clear that he wouldn’t be a “puppet” of the front office. That’s great but in the end, I don’t think this makes the Cubs any more dangerous in the NL Central and very well could backfire on Theo Epstein.

There won’t be any results until a season or two goes by, but the Cubs made their choice, and they will live or die by it. Their window looks to be sliding shut, and Ross could either aid or stop that. Only time will tell.