The Chris Moeller Archives

Tony gotta go

Fourteen years ago, Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa came to St. Louis and designated the team's Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith a spare part. Having never seen Ozzie play on an everyday basis, LaRussa declared the shortstop position up for grabs during spring training between the 41-year-old, 13-time Gold Glove winner and a 26-year-old newcomer by trade with San Francisco, Royce Clayton.

With a long-ago-damaged rotator cuff finally healed by surgery during the offseason, Ozzie hit .288 in Florida's Grapefruit League with no fielding errors in '06, while Clayton bopped for a .190 average with eight errors. Yet LaRussa declared Clayton the winner of the battle because he had "fresh legs," and announced that Ozzie would start just one game in every series that season. The club finished 56-55 in games started by Clayton during the regular season, 31-19 in games started by Ozzie, and the team won the National League Central Division by 6 games. Tone deaf as he so often would be over the next decade and a half, LaRussa would ask Ozzie if he wanted to be traded to a non-Cardinals team in May of that year, but club ownership was able to work out a deal with the shortstop in which he would retire with the Cardinals at the end of the season. Ozzie Smith was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2002. Clayton would wind up playing for three seasons as a Cardinal, with 11 MLB teams over a 16-year career, and posted a career adjusted OPS rating (77) equal to Rob Wilfong.

Today, a lot of baseball observers believe LaRussa is past his prime. They're arguing that his team has quit on him this month. His "with-me-or-against-me" style of management and his tactics towards interpersonal relationships have always rubbed some players wrong. Ron Gant, Brian Jordan, and Scott Rolen all wanted out. Others like Ozzie, Andy Van Slyke, Jim Edmonds, Anthony Reyes, Ryan Ludwick, and Adam Kennedy criticized a perceived lack of communication. And he's been paranoid as hell from the very beginning, occasionally complaining about shadowy figures within the organization or its extended family rooting against him.

This year each of these issues has been exacerbated. He's said to be in opposition to the new statistical style of player development favored by club vice president Jeff Luhnow. The executive's first-ever draft pick (in '05), Colby Rasmus, now a second-year player, asked for a trade during the summer reportedly because of hostility he was feeling in the clubhouse connected to the organization's philosophical rift. (He's "Luhnow's boy," it seems.) Rumors suggest that some in the clubhouse are miffed over a supposed LaRussa tendency to play favorites-- John Jay favored over Rasmus in the outfield, for example, or Skip Schumaker over Brendan Ryan in the infield.

LaRussa's post-game interviews, broadcast on Fox Sports Midwest, have become opportunities lately for him to launch nasty snarls and curt responses at reporters. When the manager was asked last month about sitting Rasmus in a big game, he compared the player's approach to the game unfavorably-- and unnecessarily-- to Jay, even though a trade of Ryan Ludwick had made his point moot about playing one over the other. After a loss to the Cubs just two nights ago, he made a point to boldly inform the media that an error charged to the second baseman Schumaker on a double play ball should have been charged to the shortstop Ryan because of a low toss, a ludicrous claim if you saw the play to begin with, but more interesting when you consider that LaRussa made the high-profile decision a year and a half ago to convert Schumaker, an outfielder by training, into a keystone infielder. It was a pointless verbal dig.

A couple weeks ago, he defended keeping pitcher Kyle Lohse too long in a game by referring to Lohse as "a targeted Cardinal," whatever the hell that means, and he's been harping more than ever this year about the so-called "proper way to play the game." This frequent type of comment has often been a positive for the club through the years, in the way that it could unite the clubhouse and that the players were mirroring his game intensity, but more and more that intensity now manifests itself as rigidity and tightness in the club, and LaRussa, uncharactistically outspoken of late about off-the-field issues like Arizona's immigration law and "Restoring Honor in America" rallies, seems like he's entombing himself in social paranoia that may also be manifesting itself in the form of disgust for a 24-year-old center fielder with a laid-back demeanor. I'm not suggesting that LaRussa has turned curmudgeon, but during the last home stand, he arrived late for a game because he had been yelling at some neighborhood kids for walking across his lawn. He might just go "Woody Hayes" on a player if they don't let him go soon.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals are getting trounced by the Reds of Cincinnati in the standings, and the Birds have to win 8 of their final 19 games-- an unlikely scenario, it seems lately-- to avoid finishing the season with a losing record. The Reds' emotional leader on the field is Scott Rolen, formerly the Cardinals' emotional leader. Rolen is a great player in nearly every facet of the game, and he wanted out of St. Louis three years ago because of the manager. This should stick in the craws of all Cardinals fans as Rolen should be considered the ideal player to manage. SB Nation's Dan Moore recently described the third baseman beautifully as a player who "plays baseball like he is demonstrating it for people who didn't quite hear him right the first time he tried to explain things. When he hits a home run, he puts his head down and sprints around the bases; when the ball is hit his way he reacts instantly, makes an astounding play, and then puts his head down. Now you try it," but as Moore also points out, his fire is internal, not external, so out he goes. The Cardinals' third basemen this year are Felipe Lopez, who is 29 for 160 since the All-Star break, and Pedro Feliz, who is slugging .297 for the season.

The Cardinals are playing alternately tight and uninspired. Watching Yadier Molina get doubled off on a fly ball last night, down 5-1 to the Cubs, because he forgot how many outs there were, was possibly the team's lowest point of the season to date, but there are still two and a half weeks to play. I'm not sure why a club with an All-Star nucleus of Molina, Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday, Chris Carpenter, and Adam Wainwright requires such an angry decision-maker in the dugout. It's an ultra-professional group that should be able to motivate itself regardless of the manager.

The solution is a low-key, Red Schoendienst-style field boss that would avoid attention-grabbing maneuvers, and allow the players to simply play. That solution just happens to be standing over in the third base coach's box in the person of long-time Cardinals player, then-coach, Jose Oquendo, who's been managing Puerto Rico for two cycles in the World Baseball Classic. Jose was dubbed "the Secret Weapon" as a player, and I suspect he would be one as manager as well.

posted by CM @ 11:56 AM