Marmol quick to draw a line
At 36, Oli Marmol of the Cardinals is the youngest manager in baseball.
He’s also pretty old school.
When Tyler O’Neill was thrown out at the plate Tuesday after a leisurely turn around third base, Marmol made it known he didn’t appreciate it.
“We’ve got a lot of guys playing really hard. That’s not our style of play as far as the effort rounding the bag there,” Marmol told reporters after a
4-1 loss against the Braves. “It’s unacceptable.”
O’Neill was not apologetic.
“I think [Marmol] was pretty blunt about it,” he said. “He didn’t think I gave the best effort. You know, I’m out here every day grinding my [butt] off, giving it my all, and trying to stay on the field for 160 games out here . . . I’m trying to score that run, of course. I’m not there to dog it, at all. Those are pretty strong words from him, so that’s good to know.”
On Wednesday, O’Neill was out of the lineup. He later pinch hit.
“There is a standard here. You meet it, you play. You don’t, you don’t,” Marmol said.
O’Neill’s response: “These conversations definitely could have been had inhouse and not gotten out loose like they have. It should have been handled a little differently in my opinion, but who’s to say?”
There was a time when managers regularly held players accountable and happily acknowledged their actions. When it happens now, it’s usually behind the scenes. But given the expectations in St. Louis, Marmol seemed eager to set the bar for his personal expectations.
Extra bases
Through Thursday, there were 1.31 stolen bases per game, up from 1.02 last season. If that trend holds, there would be 3,183 steals this season.
There hasn’t been a season with 3,000plus stolen bases since 2012 (3,229) . . . Shohei Ohtani threw 111 pitches in his second start for the Angels. He threw that many pitches once last season and that was in September . . . MLB went four years without any team captains. But now Aaron Judge (Yankees) and Salvador Pérez (Royals) have the title. Pérez is wearing a “C” on his uniform, the first player to do that since Jason Varitek in 2011 . . . Longtime baseball writer Claire Smith won the prestigious Red Smith Award for major contributions to sports journalism. Smith covered baseball for the Hartford Courant, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and ESPN, much of it during a time when women were a rarity on the baseball beat. On that topic, the Portland Sea Dogs hired Rylee Pay to join Emma Tiedemann in their radio booth.
They’re the second all-female booth in baseball history . . . Yankees senior adviser Omar Minaya had a big week. His son, Justin, was signed by the Portland Trail Blazers out of the NBA’s G League. The 6-foot-6-inch forward played four years at South Carolina and was granted a fifth season that he took at Providence College. He went undrafted in 2022 but stayed with it and made his way to the NBA. Minaya scored 8 points in his debut Tuesday . . . Ohio State wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba was at Fenway Park on Monday to see his brother, Canaan, play for the Pirates . . . The Nationals drew a crowd of only 10,754 for Monday night’s game against the Rays, the second-smallest crowd since the franchise moved to Washington in 2005 . . . The Guardians wore a “JA” patch on their uniforms Friday to honor the late John Adams, the fan who played a bass drum in the bleachers at home games from 1973-2019. Adams died in January . . . The Angels have made progress in baseball operations under general manager Perry Minasian. But their business operations continue to be poorly handled. Team president John Carpino instructed the team-owned radio network to remove The Athletic’s Sam Blum from their “Beat Reporter Roundtable” show because he was too negative. Two other beat writers, Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register and Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com then quit the show in protest. The Angels haven’t won a playoff series since 2009 and last had a winning record in 2015. What is there to be positive about? . . . Joe Tacopina, one of Donald Trump’s many lawyers, represented Alex Rodriguez during MLB’s Biogenesis scandal in 2013. Tacopina appeared on ESPN Radio at the time and when asked about drug use in baseball said, “I’m not going to start naming all the other players, but some of them are god-like in Boston right now.” David Ortiz took offense and he and Rodriguez were at odds for a time ... Randy Johnson is now featured at two museums in Cooperstown. A collection of 30 photographs he took in Africa is now on display at the Fenimore Art Museum through Sept. 17. Johnson was a photojournalism student when he played at USC and returned to photography after retiring in 2010. His work has appeared in several publications, including Rolling Stone . . . Happy birthday to Mike Brumley, who is
60. The infielder played at the University of Texas with Roger Clemens. The Red Sox took Clemens in the first round of the 1983 draft and Brumley in the second round. Brumley and Dennis Eckersley were traded to the Cubs in 1984 for the ill-fated Bill Buckner. The Sox brought Brumley back as a free agent in 1991 and he appeared in 65 games over two seasons. Brumley retired after the 1996 season and went into coaching and returned to the majors with the Mariners and Cubs.