Such is the case currently in Washington. When the Nationals removed the “interim” tag and anointed Jim Riggleman their manager for 2010, the next step for the former Cardinals minor league field coordinator was to hand-pick his coaching staff.

As had been rumored, Cardinals minor league hitting coordinator Dan Radison received Riggleman’s call and will be taking over the Nats’ first base coaching box.

In all fairness, Radison, a highly-respected teacher, had worked with Riggleman during the latter’s previous managerial stints in San Diego and with the Cubs, including 1995-1999 in Chicago. The 59-year-old had also been employed by the Dodgers and both New York organizations in a coaching and scouting career that began in 1984.

Radison returned to the Cardinals in 2006 as Johnson City manager after having been away from the organization for 15 years. He moved into roving instructor duties in 2007 and was named coordinator the next season.

With the Cardinals, Radison was the 2007 winner of the George Kissell Award, given annually to the person across the organization who exhibits the highest level of excellence in player development. He was rewarded for his efforts by taking a September tour with the major league club in at least each of the last two seasons.

In his first tour of duty with the Cards, the St. Louis native managed at Johnson City, Hamilton and then-Double-A Springfield, Illinois from 1986 through 1989. Both his JC clubs finished in first place. Overall, Radison has a dozen years of experience as a minor league skipper with a career record of 622-552 (.530). In his playing days, Radison spent three years in the Cardinals system as a catcher after having been drafted in the 10th round in 1972 out of SIU-Carbondale.

With Radison’s departure, only one member of the Cardinals’ top seven in-uniform minor league coordinators and instructors that were in place in 2007 remains today. Decades of experience have been lost as the dean Kissell passed away, Riggleman, former minor league hitting coordinator Gene Tenace and minor league pitching coordinator Mark Riggins moved on and then-baserunning/outfield instructor Tom Spencer‘s contract was not renewed after he managed Palm Beach last season. Of the seven, only new Batavia manager Dann Bilardello, then the minor league catching coordinator, is still in the organization.

Riggleman and the Nats also retained hitting coach Rick Eckstein, the brother of the former Cardinals shortstop and the 2007 hitting coach in Triple-A Memphis.

Riggleman had to leave the St. Louis Cardinals organization to get a shot at managing again only to find La Russa still in his way. Yet Riggleman has apparently been successful in his attempt to have the “interim” tag removed from his job as the skipper of the Washington Nationals.

It wasn’t quick or easy as the Nats stretched and strained to reach high up to the top shelf in their exhaustive managerial search, approaching the long-time St. Louis manager to gauge his interest in taking on the woeful National League East club, according to MLB.com.

“La Russa was honored to be considered, but told the Nationals he would retire if he didn’t manage the Cardinals,” a source told the writer.

No offense, but if La Russa wasn’t ready to retire, having to try to instill winning baseball in the Nationals would be enough to drive any man into a rocking chair.

Then again, it didn’t hurt to ask, as the Washingtonians are most familiar with disappointment.

The club finished 59-103 last season, coming off a 102-loss 2008. That is the worst two-year stretch in franchise history that reaches back to the 1969 Montreal Expos, losers of 107 games. The organization has enjoyed exactly one playoff series in 41 years of aggregate .476 baseball.

You can’t blame the Nats for drooling all over themselves over the prospect of pitching guru Dave Duncan working with “draft pick of the decade” Steven Strasburg and the rest of the Nats’ litter. Yet if Duncan was still angry about his lot in life with St. Louis, that shot of Washington consideration may have been all he needed to snap back into reality over just how good he has it in his current situation.

I have nothing specific against the Nats other than their long period of futile efforts on and off the field, though I do find their elongated managerial search disrespectful to the incumbent Riggleman. The former Cardinals minor league player and coach had to endure the same “hanging in limbo” treatment in Seattle one year ago. In that case, the job was given to first-time skipper Don Wakamatsu instead.

It is probably nothing against Riggleman personally, but instead a reflection of the plodding Nationals organization.

Riggleman, who has prior MLB managerial experience with San Diego and Chicago, had returned to the Cardinals in December 2004 and served as their Minor League Field Coordinator until leaving to become Seattle’s bench coach in October 2007.

At the time, the now-57-year-old made it clear his desire was to again manage in the Major Leagues, something he could not accomplish in St. Louis as long as La Russa remained.

Riggleman had spent twelve years playing and coaching in the Cardinals minor league system before becoming the organization’s Director of Player Development in 1988. Whitey Herzog added the former Arkansas manager and to his coaching staff for the White Rat’s final two seasons on the bench, 1989 and 1990.

From there, Riggleman’s travels took him to San Diego and Chicago, where he managed at the major league level for almost seven years, followed by coaching stops with Cleveland and the Dodgers. Including his 33-42 interim stint with the Nats in 2009, Riggleman’s career MLB managerial record is 555-694 (.444).

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”

“Cardinals in the New York-Penn League – 1981 to present”

“A quarter century of Cardinals minor league results”

For those who haven’t embraced the news reader age but are pressed for time (who isn’t?) and don’t want to check many different St. Louis Cardinals-related websites, a perfect answer is “Cardinals Best News Links”. There, a short description and links to many of the top Cards stories of the day are offered in one place.

With the computer of its proprietor, Josh Jones, out with a winter virus, I thought I’d pinch hit with a few of the more off-the-wall, out of the way links to articles I’ve run across in the last 24 hours or so. CBNL will be back up to date very soon.

Where are they now? – Pitts, Bialas, Riggins, Leyva and Riggleman

The current whereabouts of five ex-Arkansas Travelers, the old Cardinals’ Texas League affiliate are provided. Mark Riggins left the Cards for the Cubs in the big changes around the time of the Walt Jocketty departure. Jim Riggleman was treated a bit rudely in Seattle, but is in another Washington, DC, now. In a move one could see coming, Gaylen Pitts was recently replaced as Palm Beach manager and is now a roving instructor for the organization.

Scully’s commentary of Larsen’s perfect WS game

If you’re like me, you’ve taken a shine to the new MLB Network. The network’s inaugural broadcast was of the telecast of Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. In a nice touch, they had the battery of Larsen and Yogi Berra in the studio to comment between innings.

Yet the then-28-year-old broadcaster who covered the final innings on television that day, the Hall-of-Famer Vin Scully, was noticeably absent. MLB should have had Vin there, plain and simple.

The next best thing happened when the LA Times interviewed Scully after he watched the MLB Network replay. It is well worth the read.

Springfield at Quad Cites

The Cardinals Double-A club will invade the Quad Cities for an exhibition game on April 5^th. The teams will already be well-familiar with each other, having just flown north from training camp in sunny Florida.

Winter Warm-up: during and after

The Cardinals have released the signing times and speaking slots and locations for this coming weekend’s fan event in St. Louis. The entire Winter Warm-up schedule is too unwieldy to fully reproduce here, but MLB.com has highlighted the top speakers at the link provided. If you have further questions, drop a comment below and I will try to assist.

Our friends at Fox Sports Midwest just announced their WWU plans. Starting on Tuesday, January 20, they kick off their 2009 coverage of St. Louis Cardinals baseball with two 30-minute specials recapping the Cardinals Winter Warm-up and looking ahead to the upcoming season.

For those who cannot be there in person, these two specials will be the next-best thing and even if you do attend, you can catch all you missed. Details here.

Duncan clears waivers

As I mentioned the other day, Chris Duncan’s brother Shelly was booted off the New York Yankees’ 40-man roster in favor of some guy named Teixeira. Shelly cleared waivers and is now in Triple-A.

Izzy groundswell in Detroit?

This is especially good timing coming off my account yesterday of Jason Isringhausen’s final Cardinals save. The Detroit Free Press is endorsing the Tigers signing Izzy to help fill their closing need. For a club that stuck with shaky Todd Jones for years, Izzy seems a natural fit for Jim Leyland’s Tigers.

“Can Jason Varitek Escape his Predicament?“

Scott Boras/Jason Varitek passed up an almost assured $10 million via arbitration for Boston’s catcher and now could be forced to sign a minor-league deal. Few if any starting catching jobs are open and Pudge Rodriguez is among those also still looking.

The concept of Type A free agent ‘Tek having to sign a minor league deal because no club is willing to lose their first/second round draft pick in signing him is intriguing.  It could apply to pitcher Juan Cruz, too, a guy the Cards might be interested in if the price is right.

I wonder if Boras doesn’t do better with the biggest names than with mid-tier guys like Kyle Lohse and Varitek. Given Varitek’s career decline, passing up arbitration looks like a terrible miscalculation for the esteemed Super Agent.

Interesting P-D editorial

Already interesting on its own, but even more so since it originates from a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor, the subject of this piece is the quality of sportswriting. Wonder who he had in mind?

At Scout.com

Recently, I’ve written about the Cardinals abandoning their bid to purchase the Memphis Redbirds and posted a pair of detailed articles about Cardinals prospects and the club’s comparative position to their NL Central peers.

The latter two are subscriber-only and cover the extensive work of minor league expert Deric McKamey. His fourth-annual book, the Minor League Baseball Analyst, is now out and is a must-read for minor league fans.

I will offer just one tease. Here are McKamey’s overall system rankings across MLB for the NL Central organizations: Cardinals (10), Reds (11), Brewers (13), Pirates (20), Cubs (27) and Astros (29). I am probably doing a disservice with this snippet, as what is most interesting are the comprehensive details behind how those numbers were developed. It is a much more rigorous process than most every set of system ranking systems that I have seen.

In comparing our top 15′s, we actually agree on 14 of the 15 players. Ones Deric ranks higher than me: Daryl Jones, Pete Kozma, Mitchell Boggs, Jon Jay, Lance Lynn, Richard Castillo and Niko Vasquez. Players I put higher: Jason Motte, Jess Todd, David Freese, Jaime Garcia and Adam Ottavino. Where we agree exactly: Colby Rasmus, Brett Wallace, Bryan Anderson and Clayton Mortensen. What would an off-season be without prospect lists to discuss and debate?

Password problems

In an administrative note, the one regret I have so far in starting this blog is in the number of password-related problems you all have had to deal with. The system that my platform, WordPress, uses is unwieldy to be polite. I have tried to document how to change passwords, but if you can’t get in, you can’t make your change.

If you are stuck in that boat, email me at brian (at) thecardinalnation.com and I will reset your password so you can log in. Again, I apologize for the difficulties.

MyYahoo news reader

I am also fighting an incompatibility problem between WordPress and the MyYahoo RSS news reader. I am not alone with the problem, but as of yet, have not developed a solution. All other news readers are working fine. (I’d much rather write about baseball than battle technology, but it seems to go with the territory!)