St. Louis Cardinals Count On Three 40-Year-Olds To Support Youngest Manager In Major Leagues

Age is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

That’s why the St. Louis Cardinals have entrusted their team’s 2022 fortunes to the game’s youngest manager, Oliver Marmol, and three of its oldest players, Adam Wainwright, Yadier Molina, and Albert Pujols.

The rookie manager, who served as St. Louis bench coach under Mike Shildt for three summers, is actually younger at age 35 than his troika of elder statesmen.

Pujols, who turned 42 in January, is the oldest. Wainwright will mark his 41st birthday in August, a month after Molina turns 40.

Rarely has one team banked so heavily on one player of that age – let alone three. But the Cardinals have always flown to the tune of a different drummer.

The team has won 19 National League pennants and 11 world championships, though none since 2011. Last year, they finished second, five games behind Milwaukee in the National League Central, but lost the sudden-death Wild Card Game to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 3-1, before they could advance to the Division Series.

With all three elder statesmen likely to retire after this season, Marmol hopes the idea of a “last hurrah” will prompt performances that propel his club back into the playoff picture.

Of the three, Molina has the toughest job. The stocky Puerto Rican receiver appeared in 121 games – a heavy workload for any catcher – last summer without letting his hitting suffer. He has a .280 average over his 18-year career with 171 home runs.

With the designated hitter expanded to the National League, Pujols may not play as often as Molina. He had 17 homers in 109 games last year but was far from the form he showed during his 11 earlier seasons in St. Louis, when he won three MVP awards.

Pujols, a lifetime .297 hitter entering his 22nd season, needs 21 home runs to join Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, and Babe Ruth in the 700 Home Run Club. With Paul Goldschmidt entrenched at first base, however, the Dominican slugger will collect most of his at-bats as a DH, possibly sharing time with lefty-hitting Corey Dickerson, also signed as a free agent by the Cards.

Wainwright won’t be batting at all even though he was one of the league’s better-hitting pitchers. Despite his advanced athletic age, the 6’7″ right-hander remains at top of his game after posting a 17-7 record and 3.05 earned run average last summer, moving him within 16 wins of 200 lifetime. He and Molina have spent their entire careers in St. Louis, while Pujols returned after 10 years in Los Angeles, mainly with the Angels.

He’s among a handful of players with 3,000 hits and 500 homers. He has another 19 post-season homers, eight of them in the World Series.

One of the last free agents to find a team this spring, Pujols signed a one-year deal last week for $2.5 million, far below the annual average of the 10-year, $240 million contract offer that convinced him to leave St. Louis for Anaheim after the 2011 campaign.

Molina will make $10 million – half his personal peak payday from 2017 – as he completes a two-year contract. Wainwright will be paid $17.5 million this year, also on the back end of a two-year deal. His top salary in St. Louis was $19.5 million per year from 2014-18.

No matter how well the Cards do this year, their three 40-somethings could achieve a rare post-career milestone if they all retire together after this season. Pujols is a lock for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame, presumably on his first try, but it’s not out of the question that Molina and Wainwright could join him. All will have to wait the required five years before their names surface on the Cooperstown ballot.

At his peak, Pujols was in a class of his own. He narrowly missed – by one point on his batting average – producing 11 straight seasons with a .300 average, 30 home runs, and 100 runs batted in.

Managing the trio of veterans should be easy for Marmol, since all three are expected to be mentors to their younger, less experienced teammates.

A New Jersey native with Dominican roots, Marmol is the youngest Cardinals manager since 34-year-old Marty Marion in 1951. Unlike Marion, however, Marmol never played in the majors.

He succeeds Mike Shildt, who guided the Cards to a 17-game September winning streak but then had a falling out with John Mozeliak, the team’s president of baseball operations, after the playoffs.

Mozeliak said he promoted Marmol with an eye on continuity, counting on him to build on his experiences as bench coach. He spent three years in that role after coming to the Cards as first base coach in 2017 after coaching and managing in the team’s minor-league system.

“Oli’s going to have his own voice,” Mozeliak said when Marmol was elevated last October. “He’s going to be able to put his own fingerprints on this. You hope and expect that he learned to do things his own way and one that he has a lot of confidence in.”

In addition to Wainwright, Molina, and Pujols, Marmol has a strong veteran base that also includes Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. All are former All-Stars.

“A championship is the goal, and anything less than that is a disappointment,” Marmol said. “This year, 2022, is no different.”