Cardinals: Oli Marmol critical of himself for this decision in tough loss

St. Louis Cardinals manager Oli Marmol was critical of himself for this decision in Saturday’s tough loss against the Diamondbacks.

As a first-year manager, there were always expected to be ups and downs for Oli Marmol. For the first couple weeks, he almost felt immune to it, as the St. Louis Cardinals were rolling and in first place in the National League Central.

But on Saturday, as the Cardinals were playing the Arizona Diamondbacks, Marmol was critical of himself for keeping Miles Mikolas in for the eighth inning. The right-hander was at 91 pitches and Marmol neglected to bring in a reliever, which led to a 2-0 Cardinals loss. Said Marmol: “Miles did his job. I didn’t do mine. He was really good through seven. He was at 91 pitches. We’ve got a pretty damn good bullpen. I should’ve gone to it.”

As a result, the Cardinals dropped to three games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the division, and are 11-9 (4-6 in their last 10 games). It’s nothing to get overly concerned about – there are 142 games left in the regular season – but they have to be mindful not to get too far behind the Brewers. It’s what happened last season and by 100 games into the year, it looked almost impossible for them to dig out of the hole that they created.

Of course, the Cardinals went on a historic 18-game winning streak and that ended up cutting the deficit, but they can’t rely on that.

As for Marmol, it’s better for him to get these mistakes out of the way now as opposed to learning the hard way deeper into the season. He has already proved that he is fluent in analytics and numbers and will put his players in the best position to succeed. On Saturday, in his decision to keep Mikolas in the game, he appeared to go with his gut more so than numbers.

There is nothing wrong with that and in other times, could turn out to be the right decision. But it cost the Cardinals the game and ruined what was yet another brilliant outing from Mikolas, who is on pace to be the comeback player of the year after many thought his career was on the verge of being over.