Evaluating the 4 strongest St. Louis Cardinals managerial candidates

Who will be the next St. Louis Cardinals manager?

As we all know by now, the St. Louis Cardinals made a stunning-jaw-dropping-fall-out-of-your-chair move on Thursday by firing manager Mike Shildt. No one, absolutely no one, saw this coming. Even the most committed Shildt critics were taken aback.

Immediately names from inside and outside the Cardinals started to surface. Names mentioned inside the Cardinal organization included Oliver Marmel, Stubby Clapp, Jose Oquendo and Yadier Molina. Outside the organization included names former Cardinals such as Skip Schumaker, Mark McGwire and Matt Holliday. Even former Giants skipper Bruce Bochy’s name has surfaced.

My fellow contributors here at Redbird Rants, Robert Murray, Miranda Remaklus, and J.T. Buchheit have all posted their opinions on the next Cardinals skipper. Everyone has an opinion, including me.

I’ve posted this on Twitter and Facebook, I believe the next Cardinals manager will come from one of the internal options. There are two primary reasons for this:

1) All the coaches were retained. If the Cardinals were going to hire from outside the organization, I don’t think they would keep all these guys. In other words they would’ve started cleaning house.

2)Additionally, no self respecting manager from outside the organization would agree to come unless they could bring in some of their own coaches. Especially hitting and pitching coaches. Could you imagine Bruce Bochy agreeing to come to St. Louis and not have a say in the coaching staff? Even Skip Schumaker would want some input on this staff.

Now let’s look at the most obvious internal candidates to be the next Cardinals skipper.