As I sat down to write an article commending the excellent managing job done in 2009 by Memphis’ Chris Maloney, I couldn’t help but recall the last time the Redbirds were in the playoffs.
Here is a reminder just how long ago it actually was. 20-year-old Albert Pujols hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 13th inning to sink Salt Lake and make Memphis the 2000 Pacific Coast League champions.
Here and now, Maloney not only did a superb job leading his club into the playoffs for the first time in nine years, but he did it while shipping players to St. Louis at a rapid pace as well as losing arguably his best hitter, starter and reliever among others via mid-season trades.
At this point, I expected to link to a series of articles I wrote prior to the season about the history of the St. Louis Cardinals farm system as well as its best managers. Specifically, I wanted to point to my Maloney article during which I highlight him being the winningest Cardinals minor league skipper in at least the last 40 years.
There was only one problem. I discovered that I only posted the team-oriented half of the series. Apparently distracted by my annual trip to spring training and everything that followed, I never got back to the top managers articles.
So I am going to fix that starting right now. To be consistent with the rest of the series, all the records mentioned and listed are through the 2008 season. I will look to do some kind of update over the upcoming winter.
With that, I am ending what has to be my longest introduction ever…
Over the 43 baseball seasons from 1966 through 2008, the St. Louis Cardinals employed at least 71 different individuals to lead their various US-based farm clubs. They managed all or parts of 295 individual seasons.
During this time, the Cardinals averaged between six and seven minor league clubs per year. Their high-water mark was eight, from 1988 through 1994, with a low of five, from 1974 through 1976 and again in 1979-1980. Their current count is seven.
Of the 71 leaders, fewer than one in four, only 14 of them precisely, managed for six or more years in the Cardinals system. They are the focus of this report.
We will look at several measures, including time in the job, number of clubs and leagues managed, won-loss percentage plus frequency of playoff participation and championships.
The data that follows is ordered by regular season winning percentage. Note that several managers’ marks have asterisks. That is due to them either taking over jobs or being replaced in-season. In a handful of cases where partial won-loss records were unavailable, the entire season’s results were credited to all managers. Any playoff results were assigned to the final skipper that season only. Finally, in any leagues with no playoffs, any regular-season first-place club is considered the post-season champion.
Here are the top St. Louis Cardinals minor league managers since 1966. The categories led by each are in bold. I will profile each of the six leaders in subsequent individual posts.
| Manager | Years | # Yrs | Cities | Lvls | Win % | Playoffs | Playoff % | Champs | Champs % |
| Chris Maloney | 1991-96 | 14 | 8 | 6 | 0.519 | 3 | 21% | 1 | 7% |
| 1998-2001 | |||||||||
| 2005-08 | |||||||||
| Gaylen Pitts | 1981-82 | 16 | 7 | 5 | 0.515* | 5 | 31% | 2 | 13% |
| 1985-90 | |||||||||
| 1997-2002 | |||||||||
| 2007-08 | |||||||||
| Dave Bialas | 1982-92 | 11 | 4 | 4 | 0.513* | 5 | 45% | 0 | 0% |
| Jack Krol | 1966-76 | 13 | 7 | 4 | 0.511 | 3 | 23% | 3 | 23% |
| 1992-93 | |||||||||
| Tom Burgess | 1969-1975 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 0.509 | 2 | 29% | 2 | 29% |
| Nick Leyva | 1978-83 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 0.507 | 2 | 33% | 0 | 0% |
| Jim Riggleman | 1982-88 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 0.506 | 1 | 17% | 0 | 0% |
| Mark DeJohn | 1986-91 | 13 | 9 | 5 | 0.503 | 5 | 38% | 2 | 15% |
| 2002-08 | |||||||||
| Roy Majtyka | 1968-75 | 8 | 5 | 4 | 0.497 | 1 | 13% | 1 | 13% |
| Steve Turco | 1992-99 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 0.4855 | 1 | 13% | 0 | 0% |
| Joe Rigoli | 1981-87 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 0.4854 | 1 | 17% | 0 | 0% |
| Joe Cunningham III | 1992-94 | 12 | 7 | 4 | 0.480 | 2 | 17% | 0 | 0% |
| 1997-2005 | |||||||||
| Danny Sheaffer | 2001-06 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 0.475 | 1 | 17% | 1 | 17% |
| Joe Pettini | 1989-96 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 0.454 | 2 | 25% | 1 | 13% |
Three of the 14 are managers in the Cardinals system today – Maloney, DeJohn and Turco. Two others, Pitts and Rigoli, are also still under the Cardinals employ. The former is a roving instructor and the latter serves as a professional scout.
Related articles:
“Cardinals minor league franchise census since 1974”
“Cardinals in the Gulf Coast, Arizona and Pioneer Rookie Leagues”
“Cardinals in Triple-A – 1977 to present”
“Cardinals in Double-A – 1966 to present”
“Cardinals in the Florida State League – 1966 to present”
“Quad Cities: Cardinals top minor league club has a long history”
“Cardinals in the Appalachian League – 1975 to present”
Memphis collected a nice win. Rallied for 5 runs after two were out based loaded in the 9th, with successive RBI hits by Hamilton, Craig, and Yarbrough.
Its nice to see Yarbrough get a key hit. Can we credit the manager Maloney? Its often hard to credit managers with confidence. It was smart of someone to understand that it would be good to retain Yarbrough, because we have years invested in training him. So even though a AAA team has roster room for only 2 catchers, we kept him around on a DL taxi squad, collecting AAA pay-scale. Bryan Anderson was injured, giving Yarbrough an opportunity to play; This helps Yarbrough’s career and its a player positive approach by the organization, which helps its reputation as a fair employer when trying to persuade amateurs to sign.
Rigoli and Turco have also served for years as area or regional scouts, in addition to tours of duty as managers. This rewards a man with a fresh job, so he does not grow stale doing the same thing, year after year.
Some guys get their starts working for the organization after having been players. Dave Bialas and Danny Schaefer were catchers, for two examples.
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