Skip Schumaker showers St. Louis Cardinals manager Oli Marmol with praise

Despite this being his fourth year at the helm, the jury is still out on St. Louis Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol.

The once-youngest manager in baseball is in the midst of a four-year-long rollercoaster ride that has been managing the Cardinals. In Marmol's first year in 2022, he had the benefit of future Hall of Famers Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina leading the team with future St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Adam Wainwright. The club handily owned the National League Central, but they lost in the Wild Card round of the playoffs.

2023 and 2024 were vastly different for both Marmol and the Cardinals. Due to an inability to keep up with the changing times and a reliance on fading veterans, the Cardinals finished with a sub-.500 record in 2023 and a mediocre 2024 season. While Marmol could have made better decisions in the moments, the collapses of Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, paired with a front office and organizational pipeline that was running dry, made Marmol's job quite difficult.

This year, Oli Marmol has done a very good job managing a young group of "youngry" Cardinal players, and he's receiving praise from some excellent baseball minds.

Former St. Louis Cardinals player and coach Skip Schumaker rains praise on Oliver Marmol for his managerial expertise.

Skip Schumaker, now a special assistant with the Texas Rangers after being fired as manager of the Miami Marlins, knows Marmol well. The two worked together as coaches in St. Louis in 2022, and they were both in the Cardinals organization in the 2010s as players.

Schumaker won the National League Manager of the Year Award in 2023, so he knows a thing or two about what makes a good manager.

In an interview with The Athletic's Katie Woo on her podcast, Cardinal Territory, Schumaker spoke glowingly of his former colleague. "He's grown into a manager who he really wants to be now," said Schumaker. "(Oli's) gotten to the playoffs. He's taking young teams to places where a lot of media members didn't think they would get to so far, and it's been really fun to see him also acquire this staff that he thinks is ready to take this group to the next level. He's done a really good job of acquiring the experts in a lot of these areas in the game. It's really helped them take that organization to the next level."

Part of being a good leader is having good people surround you. According to Schumaker, Oli has done just that with his assistant coaches of Daniel Descalso, Jon Jay, and Brant Brown. In fact, Brown was Schumaker's hitting coach in Miami, so Skip knows Brant quite well and can speak directly to his expertise.

Fans may still be bothered by Oliver Marmol, but he's proven that he's a legitimate MLB manager this year. He was given no quarter by ownership and the front office, but he's run with the roster he's been given. Often praised as a player's manager, Marmol is putting that moniker into action this year by helping to develop several key young players, including Matthew Liberatore, Kyle Leahy, Ivan Herrera, and Victor Scott II. It's refreshing to hear a person with actual baseball knowledge compliment the St. Louis Cardinals' manager.