Cardinals: Matt Carpenter helps further piece together Mike Shildt’s firing

Was Matt Carpenter’s refusal to embrace Analytics a cause in the ousting of Mike Shildt as the Cardinal’s skipper?

When Mike Shildt was fired as the Cardinals manager on October 14, many wondered what happened. After a franchise-record-17-game winning streak in September, Shildt had just led the Cardinals into their third consecutive postseason birth. The move by the Cardinals front office floored both fans and media.

Neither Shildt or Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak gave us much of reason other than ‘philosophical differences.” Many suspected it was due to a feud between Shildt and the team hitting coach, Jeff Albert, over the team’s approach to analytics.

Now, in a recent article on Carpenter in The Athletic by Ken Rosenthal, gives us some evidence of the possible divide between Mike Shildt and Jeff Albert over the approach or emphasis on analytics. Although the article doesn’t mention Shildt, it’s reading in between the lines that could be telling.