For Cardinal Skip Schumaker’s success as Marlins’ manager is no joke

In the last weekend of April, the Miami Marlins traveled to Wrigley Field to play the Cubs one series before the St. Louis Cardinals did the same. Their manager, a legendary prankster, might have chosen any number of unpleasant surprises to leave behind for his counterpart.

Instead, Oliver Marmol pulled open a drawer in his desk to find a full-sheet glossy headshot of Skip Schumaker, a polite-if-jarring reminder of the office’s most recent previous occupant.

Whether Schumaker got up to any further funny business with camera lenses is a mystery that’s likely to remain unsolved.

Far from wasting his time off the field, Schumaker and his Marlins have been one of baseball’s biggest successes on the field. The Marlins enter play against the Cardinals in Miami on Monday in second place in the National League East, trailing only the behemoth club in Atlanta. They’re holding the first Wild Card slot in the NL playoff picture, a full two and a half games clear of Cincinnati, the first team out.

Without much roster turnover year over year, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Skip the skip has made an immediate impact.

“I love that dude,” Marmol said before Sunday’s series-clinching win over the New York Yankees. “Someone I trust a ton. Really enjoyed our time together here, and he’s gonna do a phenomenal job for as long as he wants to do it.”

The Cardinals knew when they hired Schumaker as Marmol’s bench coach prior to the 2022 season that he wouldn’t likely be in that job for long. After a stint as Jayce Tingler’s associate manager in San Diego – an invaluable position in which he was leaned on heavily to steer a rookie manager through a difficult clubhouse – he found himself in much the same position in St. Louis.

It helped that he’d been a trusted teammate and good friend to Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals, prior to last season, spoke about a need to beef up their coaching staff with personnel who had played the game at the highest level and could relate to players directly, understanding coaching with a modern view of a player.

He and Marmol formed a fruitful partnership, so much so that when Schumaker did end up taking the job in Miami, Matt Holliday leaped to the front of the line of candidates to replace him. The Cardinals saw their formula working and were determined to replicate it, and were on track to do so before Holliday stepped away due to family obligations just before the start of spring training.

The connection Marmol had with Schumaker and the traits the latter embodied aren’t a slight against Joe McEwing; he too had a career in the majors, and he also brings the bonafides of decades of coaching to back up that perspective.

The job traditionally adjusts to the personnel more than the other way around. With Schumaker, who played as recently as 2015, was teammates with three of his charges, and played against several others, it sometimes seemed like he’d shaped it into a direct reflection of his own personality. That levity can go a long way over the course of a long season.

“As a bench coach, you have to have your hand in everything because you’re trying to spot inconsistencies and areas of improvement,” said Marmol, who held that position under Mike Shildt. “(You have to) know when to encourage, when to lay the hammer down, what needs to reach my desk, what doesn’t.

“He did a really good job of building a relationship with the players, and trust. Special dude. He’s gonna do extremely well for as long as he wants to do this.”

Parceling out credit to the coaching staff can be tricky. The Marlins, after all, enter play Monday with the fifth-best team earned run average in the NL, and they lead the league in strikeouts. They’re 11 games above .500 despite a negative run differential; they’re outperforming that differential by a full eight games.

They’re also a best-in-the-majors 19-5 in games decided by one run. Some of that is good fortune, but a lot is great pitching. With a staff fronted by 20-year-old phenom Eury Pérez – and without defending Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara having yet rounded into form – the Marlins are asking for less from their bullpen and getting more consistent results.

In many ways, they’re the inverse of the Cardinals. Pitch well, and the lineup will follow closely enough to stay competitive. Schumaker, now well-traveled and more than ready for his opportunity, has benefited from building that baseline of knowledge.

“Nothing operates in a silo,” Marmol said. “You understand the bigger picture of how to bring everybody together, and collaboration and how that takes place. And I think it’s a huge positive when you have the ability to draw from all those different experiences – from playing to coaching to front office to bench coach to all the different roles on the field, but also different organizations too.”

Whether team photographer is among those skills is another mystery left unsolved.