Long Known As a Bad Tactician, Mike Matheny Was Fired for Being a Bad Boss

The Cardinals won the World Series in 2011, and their Hall of Fame manager, Tony La Russa, felt it was time to call it a career. La Russa was one of the great tacticians of his era, and while the efficacy of some of his innovations — such as the one-inning closer — was questionable, nobody managed more than he did.

The man the Cardinals chose to replace La Russa, then-41-year-old Mike Matheny, had no previous managerial experience, and never figured out the tactical side of the game. He never figured out how to properly run a bullpen, and despite managing in the National League for six-plus seasons, he never really figured out the double switch. Matheny wasn’t the only inexperienced former light-hitting big leaguer to be handed the keys to an MLB franchise toward the beginning of the decade, but most of the others have since been fired (Colorado’s Walt Weiss, Chicago’s Robin Ventura) or figured it out (Milwaukee’s Craig Counsell). Matheny won despite being widely regarded as the league’s worst tactician.

But bad tactics aren’t why the Cardinals fired him on Saturday night.

Matheny led the Cardinals to the playoffs in each of his first four seasons at the helm, with St. Louis winning an MLB-high 100 games in 2015. Since he was fired with the team’s 2018 record at 47–46, he’s still yet to post a losing season. That’s because, as much as some people hate bunts and managing to the save, you can get away with bad tactics as long as you don’t lose the clubhouse. Matheny has done that last part to spectacular effect this year.

Two weeks ago, Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak trashed outfielder Dexter Fowler in a radio interview, saying, “I’ve also had a lot of people come up to me and question his effort and his energy level. You know, those are things that I can’t defend.” Those remarks were poorly timed, as Fowler was just taking paternity leave, long a lightning rod for the hunter-gatherer types in sports and sports media, and Mozeliak quickly tried to walk them back. But it was the start of the fatal crack in the dam.

Less than a week later, Mark Saxon of The Athletic reported that Fowler and Matheny were no longer on speaking terms. Five days after that, Saxon reported that St. Louis closer Bud Norris, with Matheny’s support, had been “mercilessly riding” rookie reliever Jordan Hicks, describing a pattern of behavior that sounds an awful lot like workplace bullying.

Matheny’s contribution to the story: “I think the game has progressively gotten a little softer. Man, it had some teeth not that long ago.” When Matheny called the story “inaccurate,” Saxon arranged to have the tape played on local radio. And on Saturday, after a second consecutive blowout loss to the last-place Reds, Mozeliak cashiered Matheny and two assistants.

In the second decade of baseball’s public analytical revolution, we’re learning that the immediate post-Moneyball insights about the manager’s role were wrong. It helps if a manager bats his best hitter second, avoids calling for many bunts, and is willing to use his closer in a tie game on the road. Only that’s not the whole proverbial ballgame. Managers are tacticians, but more than that they’re managers.

A clubhouse is a workplace, and like most employees, ballplayers usually perform better when they enjoy their work, or at least feel invested in it. The manager’s primary job responsibility — and the way he can contribute the most to winning — is to ensure that his players feel that investment. There are as many ways to foster a unified, motivated ballclub as there are varieties of carrot and stick. Even in the recent past, old-school managers such as Ned Yost, Dusty Baker, and Charlie Manuel have won not because they’re John McGraw, but because they can get 25 guys to pull together. For that reason, if you can’t get the tactics right, you damn well better bring the best out of your players.

Matheny was never able to do that. And ironically for such a young manager, he committed an age-old sin: inflexibility. Calling younger players “soft” is an insult, but it’s also code. It means that modern players complain too much, that they’re not quick enough to resort to shouting and violence, and that they don’t obey orders without question. I’d argue these are all improvements that make the sport better and that the current generation of MLB players is thoughtful, self-confident, and generally respectful. Even if Matheny’s sentiment plays well with baseball men from the last century, that’s not his audience — players are, and they’ll always reject that message.

Would you go above and beyond for a boss who badmouthed you in the press? Would you look forward to coming to work each day if your boss had empowered a coworker to bully you? I wouldn’t, and neither, apparently, would the St. Louis Cardinals. Nor should they. The good news is that now they don’t have to.