Keith Law tells Oli Marmol haters to "touch grass" while defending Cardinals manager

Please don't throw rocks at me, but I have to agree with The Athletic's Keith Law and his defense of St. Louis Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol.

Would I have voted for Marmol as the third-best manager in the National League this year? Probably not. But Law's third-place vote for the Cardinals' manager in the National League Manager of the Year voting was a sign of respect for the job Marmol did with this club this year, and like Law said in his passionate defense of Marmol on Foul Territory, too many Cardinals fans do not appreciate the job he did in 2024.

Law, after telling the haters to "touch grass" (which I am sure made many of those same people tune him out even further), highlighted a few of the reasons why Marmol was impressive as the Cardinals' skipper in 2024.

I'll get to those reasons in just one moment, but I do want to point out that I am not some Keith Law apologist. I've actually had a lot of disagreements with his takes over the years (like calling Lars Nootbaar a part-time player even after he broke out), and I think the way he interacts with fans (back again to the telling people to touch grass) brings down his "likability". Even so, Law is highly regarded in the industry and I do not doubt his baseball knowledge.

Law highlighted how Marmol's two best (and highest-paid) players going into the 2024 season both underachieved in major ways and while many Cardinals hitters struggled this past season, it's fair to say Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado's regression was at the heart of those issues. If you had told fans before the season that both Goldschmidt and Arenado would regress as much as they did, I think people would have assumed this was another 71-win season.

Instead, Marmol managed a top-10 bullpen throughout the 2024 season, helping the Cardinals consistently squeak out close contests, and somehow found a way to win 83 games despite the rotation being mediocre and the lineup just being bad. The Cardinals actually outperformed their Pythagorean record (a predictive formula of how many games a team should win based on the number of runs they score and allow) by seven games, tied with the Tampa Bay Rays as the biggest "overachievers" this year.

I'm not sitting here today calling Marmol one of the best managers in baseball. 2022 was a great campaign and 2023 was an absolute mess. 2024 was frustrating for many reasons, but I don't think Marmol was to blame for those. In fact, I think there are plenty of arguments to be made that Marmol helped the club achieve more than it should have this year, and it is one of the reasons why he's going to be back in 2025.

Will Marmol be the Cardinals' manager once Chaim Bloom takes over following the 2025 season? That remains to be seen. We don't know how Bloom feels about Marmol, and frankly, his performance in 2025 will play a role in that evaluation. I know it's an unpopular opinion amongst Cardinals fans, but for all of the reasons to be frustrated with the Cardinals right now, Marmol should not be one of those top reasons. I'm glad a national guy like Keith Law came to his defense.