I think we can say with reasonable certainty that we've seen the end of Mike Matheny in a major league dugout.

I don't see any reason why that would be the case, he's young, has shown levels of success etc. He's much more successful than Joe Torre after similar number of years in the role as manager.

He wasn't really that bad in KC, but I can't say he was a particularly good manager. Very forgettable. Rarely said much, just gave a blank stare as he watched pitcher after pitcher throw balls. I don't think he's a dinosaur, but if teams are looking for cutting edge analytical minds, they'll look past him.

Managers really don't do much anyhow. Most of what they do now is P.R., but even that is probably less value these days.

The most important thing they probably do each day is figure out when to take the pitcher out.

Is a catcher the best for that? Or someone who came up a a pitching coach.

Really I think it's time to merge the roles of GM and field manager again (that's what they were in the first place). Make Billy Bean or whomever sit in the dugout and manage the team. That's the person making the decisions anyhow.

Managers really don't do much anyhow.

and we know this how?

I don't have a strong opinion about him, which might be part of the problem. I never had an idea what the plan was, what the formula was, who they were counting on to produce, etc. Yost wasn't a tactical genius, but I think everyone on the team knew what was expected of them and how they were expected to contribute on any given night.

Forgettableness aside, I don't think you could say he was getting the most out of the players. The Royals started off slow, as though everyone took a break after learning they'd made the team out of spring training. A lot of players hired to be reliable veterans weren't, and it didn't seem like they had spectacular work ethics or team attitudes to make up for it -- there were no Frenchies in the group. A large fraction of the team took an extra week off before the All Star break because of the vaccine policy and there were whispers of a tense and uncomfortable clubhouse.

Matheny had a bad clubhouse in STL. He's a bit of a born again type and while I have no issue with it, my guess is that it's a bad template for reaching out to 26 young guys. He was a tactical disaster in STL and had no understanding of or put value in analytics. His tactical weakness could be made up by having a really strong bench coach but I don't think Matheny thinks it's an issue.

If Maddon and TLR have been run out of the managers jobs, no way a weaker version of them will get another job

His success in STL was simply the result of having good players. Had the Cardinals had a good manager, the Giants never would have had 3 trips to the WS. Matheny cost us one if not two appearances.

His success in STL was simply the result of having good players.

I mean, every manager who is successful has good players.

Had the Cardinals had a good manager, the Giants never would have had 3 trips to the WS. Matheny cost us one if not two appearances.

Well, the first Giants WS appearance came before Matheny managed the Cards. The 2nd Giants WS appearance came in Matheny's rookie year - and the Giants beat the Cards in 7 games in the NLCS, by scores of 7-1, 5-0, 6-1, 9-0. I'm not looking deeply at that series obviously - but it looks like St. Louis was completely outplayed in those four defeats. They lost the 2014 NLCS to the Giants in five games.

In 2013, they went to the World Series. In 2015, they lost in the NLDS to a Cubs team that had won 45 of their last 63 regular season games.

The club had a decent amount of turnover. He inhereted the defending world champs in 2012, but six of the eight starters on the 2012 team hadn't been starters on the 2011. (Granted, the two returnees were Molina and Holliday, but then again they lost Pujols and Berkman. And all six of the new 2012 starters were gone from the positional starters by 2014. By 2015, Holliday was past his prime, Molina had a lousy year - and they won 100 games in a division featuring the 3 best teams in the NL.

By all accounts, Matheny is a lousy in-game manager. I don't doubt that. I always figured he was underrated as a manager because 1) I think people overrate the in-game stuff because it's by far the easier part of the manager's job to gauge, and 2) his damn teams kept winning in St. Louis. I vaguely remember wondering how the 2016 Cards kept doing it despite a lineup that largely didn't look that impressive - well, they did it anyway, until the postseason.

I've hardly followed baseball the last few years and am going off vague memories of what I felt of Matheny years ago. I could be way off. I think his main problem now is that teams arelooking for something different in managers these days. In the era of Big Data Baseball, they're looking for someone who will work more closely with the front office. Matheny is a weird transitional manager in this way. His initial hire was a sign of how the old process of becoming a manager was breaking down. He'd been neither a coach or manager for a professional team before then. But teams increadingly want someone for whom the relationship with the front office is more important than anything else.

Really I think it's time to merge the roles of GM and field manager again (that's what they were in the first place). Make Billy Bean or whomever sit in the dugout and manage the team. That's the person making the decisions anyhow.

Baseball is claerly going the opposite direction, where the old GM duties are now split between GM an Executive VP. This might just be title inflation, but I suspect it relates to the rise of Statcast. There is so much more data to pour through than ever before that you need more hands on deck, and more oversight over the more hands. There are dang few organizations of any sort in the world - sports, business, government, NGO, whatever - that have fewer adminsitrators as they have more info/stuff to oversee.

Anyhow, I'm not sure why being good at negotiating contracts for a new reliver means you'll be good at knowing when to pull a reliever.

KC was a bad fit for Matheny, contrary to what Duke is saying, Matheny wasn't a horrible tactical manager, he was a person still learning tactics and was willing to take advice from everyone. With the Cardinals front office system that they have, it works. He'll use data if someone tells him to. He's also a player manager, provided the players are professional, he's not going to be Dusty Baker and be able to control a big personality type of manager, so he'll have problems there, and his christian insistence turns off as many players as it appeals to others.

The biggest strength of Matheny was that he was willing to listen to people who were giving him advice on how to manage. Second biggest strength was lack of arrogance or confidence, in that he realized his role is to guide and set lineups, and that the team wasn't about him. Which is why people liked playing for him. Basically Matheny will get a team to perform to their talent, which is all you can really ask out of a manager. He's not going to Weaver his way to an extra win or two a year, but he's also not going to cost you wins if you provide him with the proper tools. Again reminds me a lot of Joe Torre at the same age.

Matheny was a horrible tactical manager. His bullpen usage was terrible and there's hardly anyone who thinks otherwise. He rode his best guys too hard generally and did not optimize any one's usage based on analytics. He loved the sacrifice bunt. He was excellent at letting the starting pitcher bat in the bottom of an inning with runners on and then pulling him in the next half inning when he got into trouble. He did not understand or care to understand the concept of platooning. He let the defensive excellence of the cardinals go to hell so much so that they had to bring Shildt up to rectify things. He had no concept of aggressive base running - something else Shildt fixed.

Oli (and Shildt ) ran circles around Matheny managerially

As to the comment that Matheny wasn't responsible for losing in the NLCS in 2012, he had a 3-1 lead with a game 5 at home. He lost that and then his team collapsed on SF in games 6/7. It's once thing to point at the final scores but he was up 3-1 with game 5 at home and pissed it all away. At the end of the day, it's the players that lose but a good manager finds a way to win a game up 3-1 with a home game in hand. That team had just won a World Series the year before.

It's once thing to point at the final scores but he was up 3-1 with game 5 at home and pissed it all away. At the end of the day, it's the players that lose but a good manager finds a way to win a game up 3-1 with a home game in hand.

They scored one-run in three games. The hitters didn't hit.