3 things Oliver Marmol has done well this year and 1 thing he butchered

With 20 games left to go in the 2024 season, the St. Louis Cardinals have already surpassed their record from 2023. Now, last year was an aberration of a year, and the Cardinals SHOULD do better than just 71 wins this year, but that shouldn't take away from the change in pace the team has shown this year.

It's tough to decipher who is responsible for the team's bounceback this year, but perhaps their manager, Oliver Marmol, deserves the most credit. Bernie Miklasz of KMOX recently defended Oliver Marmol on his new YouTube channel. Bernie made sure to duck and cover from the potential vitriol that would come of him posting this video, and I, too, am prepared to see some flak for this opinion.

Marmol is seen as John Mozeliak's "guy" since Mo fired Mike Shildt a couple of years ago and supplanted him with Oliver. This is probably the reason most fans have grown weary of Marmol, though leading a team to a 71-win season following a season with 93 wins doesn't bode well for any manager regardless of his track record.

However, I can agree with Bernie in the fact that Marmol has done quite well this year with what he was given. Every manager makes mistakes in a season; there are countless decisions each game that a manager must make from pitch calls to movement on the base paths to defensive substitutions to bullpen moves. Multiple those dozens of decisions each game over the course of a 162-game season, and it's clear how many opportunities there are for a manager to make a mistake or help his team.

Since the dawn of baseball, fans have meticulously dissected a manager's decisions. It's easy thanks to the benefit of hindsight to see how a pitching change or a defensive shift could cause a run to score. It's not as easy making those decisions in the moment.

I would like to argue that Oliver Marmol is one of the primary reasons the Cardinals have bounced back this season, and I have three ways in which he has succeeded (and one way in which he's fallen flat).