By Rob Rains
JUPITER, Fla. – Neither team owner Bill DeWitt Jr. or president of baseball operations John Mozeliak ever had a doubt in their minds that Oli Marmol would not continue to be the manager of the Cardinals beyond this season.
They both knew, however, that having Marmol entering the season in the final year of his contract would lead to speculation, and perhaps a distraction.
Any possibility of that happening was eliminated on Friday when the Cardinals announced they have signed Marmol to a two-year extension, running through the 2026 season.
“Did not want to go into the year with this being a distraction for Oli, for his staff, for the players,” Mozeliak said at a press conference. “We have a lot of faith in him. We believe he’s the right person for the job and we’re excited to know he will be here for the next few years.
“It was important for us to get this done and we’re glad it’s behind us and we look forward to the future.”
Marmol, 37, signed a three-year contract prior to the 2022 season. The Cardinals went 93-69 in Marmol’s first season, winning the NL Central, but fell into last place in the division in 2023 with a 71-91 record, their poorest finish since 1990.
“There was never any doubt in my mind he was going to continue to be the Cardinals’ manager, but you come off the year that we experienced, I think a lot of people would have been happy if we were both gone,” Mozeliak said.
Mozeliak said he did not come into spring training thinking about signing Marmol to the extension now, but his thoughts changed as the camp continued.
“As I would sit in meetings, talk through some things, especially how we have to think about our roster building and decision making, the one thing I didn’t want to have happen is someone like Oli having to think about it for ‘win now, win right now,’ at the expense of maybe a bigger or better decision down the road for the pressure of just winning,” Mozeliak said.
“If we knew he was going to be the manager anyway, let’s just deal with it now, and that’s where we got to.”
Marmol said over the winter that he did not intend to let his job status be a distraction this season and that it would not change how he managed. Still, having the extension, does offer him more peace of mind.
“Expectations for our organization, for our fan base, is to win,” Marmol said. “I will go about it the exact same way, but I do think it does remove certain distractions that allow us to focus on what’s at hand without having to kind of answer these questions moving forward.”
Mozeliak said part of the decision was based on the moves the team made during the off-season, adding three veteran free agent starters in Sonny Gray, Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson to shore up the team’s pitching staff.
“To get into the season with a ‘lame duck’ manager seemed like the wrong strategy, given the fact that the roster we’ve assembled we believe is going to be competitive, has a chance to be exciting, and we just didn’t want something, if we had a stumble or get off to a slow start, all of a sudden everybody’s looking over their shoulders,” Mozeliak said.
“It’s just not fair to everybody involved. The timing of this, as we started to think more and more about it, had to be dealt with now and not something mid-season or at the end of the year.”
Marmol acknowledged that starting the season with his new contract will allow him to reflect more on what went wrong with the team last year.
“I could have done a better job last year, and you sit in the off-season and you think of the how and you make sure you don’t repeat certain things,” Marmol said. “You do a lot of self-reflection, especially when you get beat up as much as we did last year.
“It’s an understatement to say I am extremely looking forward to this upcoming year.”
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