Talk about a Saturday night news dump!
After a few disappointing years, an increasing cacophony of clubhouse problems, a recent dispute with Dexter Fowler, and a report that he’d been siccing a veteran reliever on the youngsters, Mike Matheny has finally been booted as the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals:
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) July 15, 2018
Given the trajectory of things, as a Cubs fan, you can only regard this as bad news. Matheny was no longer an effective manager (if he ever was), and his residency at the head of the clubhouse there ensured a kind of listless stasis for an organization that’s fallen off the map ever since the Cubs bounced them from the playoffs in 2015.
Among the many reasons Cubs fans loved Mike Matheny in the Cardinals clubhouse for years to come. pic.twitter.com/Xq2ZHLnbEe
— Bleacher Nation (@BleacherNation) July 15, 2018
I’ll never forget that the Cardinals chose to give Matheny a three-year extension immediately after the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. It felt so appropriate. And now he won’t even finish out that contract, which ran through 2020.
The Cardinals will proceed for the second half with an interim manager and fill-in coaching staff, and, while they may try to conduct a managerial search in-season, that can be very difficult to do, for obvious reasons. Instead, it’s more likely they hit this in earnest at the start of October, when their season is over.