Lloyd Braun wrote: ↑18 Aug 2025 09:46 am
It's hilarious that everyone generally accepts now that Mo hamstrings Marmol, hamstrung Shildt, and that he is a terrible evaluator of talent, drafting, trades, FA signings and roster management, and that he has 100% control of basically every single decision that is made on field.
But refuse to re-examine the the possibility that the exact same held true about Mo during Matheny's years too.
From 2014 - 2017 we didn't even have a real MOTO bat. Certainly didn't have a single legit cleanup hitter in any of those 4 years. Holliday was at the end of his run. And the moment Matheny did something against Mo's wishes (benching Fowler in year 2 of his $80 million fiasco), he got fired.
Matheny never once in any season, had a legit MOTO bat/defensive wizard - a Complete star player. Shildt and Marmol got Goldy and Arenado. TLR got Rolen, Edmonds and Pujols. Guys that had the entire package.
Mo did not acquire a single top of the rotation pitcher during Matheny's entire tenure, or Shildt's for that matter. Gray is the closest thing he's had to brining in a TOR in his entire 18 years as POBO.
To think how bad Matheny had it mid-tenure... in 2016, he was given a defensive infield of Carpenter, Adams, Moss, Diaz, Garcia and Gyorko to handle an all ground ball pitching staff. Wong was the only legit infielder on that roster but hit .215.
Mo's fix to that was bringing in Fowler, Ozuna and Jose Martinez
The reality is that 2012 was the only legit roster that was well built, and we made it to game 7 of the NLCS. Pretty good. The 2012 playoff team did not have Pujols, Berkman or Furcal, and had an injured 5 inning pitcher in Carpenter, since he missed 99% of the regular season. Still a very good roster... not even close to the 2011 roster that barely got in and then needed miracle after miracle to stay alive and win.
The 2013 roster was basically a rebuild that Matheny way overachieved with. No Carp, Pujols, Berkman, Furcal... Motte had TJ and Lohse walked as a Free Agent. Not a single player of notoriety was brought in that offseason to replace any of the stars we had lost over the last two years. Kozma was our freaking starting SS the entire year, because Mo didn't think an upgrade was necessary. We basically played every night with 7 hitters and 2 pitchers batting.
Instead, Matheny was asked to win with an almost all rookie pitching staff that set a major league record for most starts, innings and pitches by rookie pitchers in the entire history of baseball. Shelby Miller, Wacha, Lyons, Gast. Nearly our entire backend of the BP was rookies: Rosie, Siegrist, Maness and Carlos Martinez.
In 2013, rookie pitchers accumulated 641 innings and 20 rookies!!!!!!!!!! appeared in games, having to contribute nearly half of our 97 victories.
This doesn't include Joe Kelly or Lance Lynn who were rookies in 2012 but contributed an additional 324 innings... meaning rookies and 2nd year pitchers were responsible for 1000 innings pitched in 2013.
All Matheny did was win 97 games, the Pennant and last till game 6 of the World Series, all while morons from the BFIB swore up and down he was the worst manager in the history of baseball.