I think he’ll be back. It didn’t appear to me during the season that he has lost any of his enthusiasm for the game.

It’s funny, isn’t it, that with the best player in baseball, the pitching staff we have and the soft, ever-forgiving media, that he has to actually “ponder” whether or not he’ll be back? Even the staunchest of LaRussa supporters, as misguided as they are, have to be slighted at that.

K N-M=IDIOT

I’m one of the “misguided” LaRussa supporters who has happened to enjoy the 14 years of success TLR has brought to us.I feel he will be back for another year.I don’t think he will be back after that.
And who asked Burwell anyway? Can’t believe that guy is still here…

Brian, he’s had one year of success. 2006. That’s one out of 14, or, around 7% success rate. I pity the life you lead that qualifies that as “successful.”

Of Course he’s back. He does this every year so everyone will beg him to come back to boost his self esteem.

1/14 is still better than 1/32, statistically all things equal how often a team should win. We have made it into the playoffs many times, and almost more importantly, consistently had a team that is a contender, and fun to watch. If you want to bellyache, this really doesn’t seem to be the guy or the team to do it about. Head on over to columns about the rams, K N-M.

I’m not a genius but I know how to spell it.

Burwell….Great insight. Do you really get paid for this? Seems pretty easy to me.

K N-M: So success is based solely on WS championships, I guess Leyland and Cox stink too? The “sucess rate” of the Cardinals history prior to TLR is just 9%, and that accounts for the most titles in MLB next to the Yankees. I guess you think the manager of the year should always be the skipper of the WS champs then too, eh? Or Bonds - steroid cheat and liar aside - was a worthless player because he never earned a ring? You’re one-dimensional “analysis” at measuring success is laughable.

Adios, I am sure you will have luck in finding a team with the horses that will make you look as good as you think you are…….because the real money knows with out horses Tony can not deliver…….You can talk about Cox but he built teams from rookies….Tony never has….check the facts

Tony and his band of flunkies are gone forever. Morale in the clubhouse was very low at the end of the season due to Tony’s over-managing. Albert sensed it and took Toney’s side versus the Ludwick/Ankiel side.

The owners will save face by stating that a “mutual” decision was made to bring in a new management team. Onward.

Nothing went wrong, and I speculate that he’ll be back. He is being who he is, deliberate and disciplined.

There is too much talent to manage on this team.

My gut tells me that TLR loves to compete as a field boss in MLB. He has a luxury box seat in the game of life that has many benefits, including a team that has a good chance of contending. It seems to me that would be hard to walk away from.

Lol navin, I thought it looked wrong!

There you go, I spelled it gooder.

LOL! You are vindicated. I mispell stuff all the time and everyone points it out to me. Sorry to be a Jerk!

I’m affraid that TLR and company will be back. That only insures more of the same. Players with talent, but no direction or discipline, and continued frustration of being close, but always falling short. I can only hope that I am wrong, and the “Duncan Situation” will errupt into a TLR departure.

It’s time for the annual ‘beg TLR to come back” party. Please Tony, it’s okay, you can leave now. You’re a genius! You know more about baseball than anyone else! You’re near the top in the wins column! You’re all of the TLR supporters BS. Just go away. We’ll be fine. I’m willing to face life without Tony. He wins the division with the hapless Brewers and Cubs. WOW!

Quite an interesting choice of descriptive word, “Niggling”, Derrick. You are trying to get into LaRussa’s dog house aren’t you?

nig·gling (nglng)
adj.
1. Petty, especially in a nagging or annoying way; trifling: a pointless dispute over niggling details.
2. Overly concerned with details; exacting and fussy.

——————————————————————————–

niggling n.
niggling·ly adv.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Who would all of you intellectual giants suggest could do a better job managing—-is Vern Rapp still alive? You may not like Tony from a personalty perspective (which none of you actually know anyway, just your assumptions from the media, with whom he is admittedly not very savy), but surely you can see the statistical results. If you can’t then I hope none of you have jobs requiring data analysis or decision making.

MikeW,

You asked who we would rather have than TLR? My answer is, just about any one else. Just in case you haven’t noticed, MLB does not award the World Series based on statistics, except winning in the Fall Classic. BTW, just in case you haven’t noticed, that all important statistic is lacking, especially if you compare the previous manager with the current manager.

no prob navin, i kind of pride myself on grammar and spelling, and then i throw genious out there! I’m really still laughing!

LaRussa, go back to the American League. We don’t want you here any longer.

We got swept, and it’s time to sweep out his office. 1 WS title in his tenure is retarded. The Marlins have 2!! THE MARLINS.

“Tony is back. One of his biggest concerns is that he is wearing thin with the media, which probably is exaggerated.” Hmmm….I wonder who Jeff is talking about here? Could it be Bernie Miklasz?

The Cards did invest in this last season. Late. Going into 2010 we look as pencil thin as ever. He won’t have that bat to protect Pujols that he and everyone in St. Louis begs for. And as far as walking away from Pujols, Carpenter, and Wainwright? On this team, that’s all he’d be walking away from. I think he’ll stay, but these so called compelling arguments don’t seem concrete. He’ll stay and move to LA for 2011 when Torre is gone.

Tony’s coming back. Sure he’s tired of the media, but who isn’t? I don’t even have to deal with journalists on a daily basis and they make me sick, lol. There’s too much good on this team to pass up. If this was a rebuilding year, then I think we’d be looking at a different scenario.

As a Whiteyball fan when TLR goes I hope they replace him with a man with a TRADITIONAL CARDINALS STYLE. Whiteyball might be dead, no turf, smaller parks, etc. Cardinal style baseball exsisted way before. Have you forgotten how Lou drove pitchers crazy in the 60’s, or Enos’s mad dash home during the W.S. When your CATCHER is second on your team in SB = boring.

I see making the playoffs as a successful (not great) year. Below are the number of times TLR’s Cards have been to the post-season, compared to all other NL teams over the past 14 years. This enough for you to want him back?
- Atl: 10
- StL: 8
- Hou: 6
- LA: 5
- SD: 4
- SF: 4
- AZ: 4
- Chi: 4
- Phi: 3
- NY: 3
- Col: 2
- Fla: 2
- Mil: 1
- Cin: 0
- Pitt: 0
- Wash: 0

jdog55,

Yes, 8 trips to the post season would seem to indicate success. I would still like to see improvement. Of the 8 post season appearances, only 2 have resulted in World Series appearances, and only 1 victory. My other complaint is that not only have the Cards lost in post season play under TLR, but they have played poorly when they got there. TLR’s teams peak way too early, and run out of gas too soon. If this happened only once, then I would not complain, but TLR seems not to be able to learn from past failures. If he hasn’t learned after this long, then why would any Cardinals fan believe that he will in the future? I say that it is well past time to move on.

Commish sounds pretty certain, so now I’m confident he’ll be back. He is one of the top 3 managers every year. Go Cards!

It is time for Tony to retire. His inability to generate any steam from what is arguably the best team in baseball was pathetic! When a team as good as the Cardinals gets swept, you have to start at the top with the manager. He should retire; bring in some fresh blood that will get the team rocking again. All you needed to do was watch Molina stroll (maybe he was hurt?) after that passed ball and you know they weren’t motivated. And that’s the manager’s job!

I would just like to throw out there to all of you who are complaining about the sucess or lack there of, what the crap do you expect. I don’t know if you realize this, but there are thirty teams in MLB. Fifteen of those would be in what’s called the National League, you know the one that the Cardinals play in. In the past fourteen years there have been fourteen World Series, and with the Phillies this year there are only four teams who have made a WS appearance more than once, and the Cardinals would be one of those.

Going into this a little bit further, the National League is broken into smaller division, and since St. Louis is in the center of the country, they are in what’s called the Central Division. There have been six teams in the NL Central since 1998. The Cardinals, under the management of Tony LaRussa have won this division seven times in the past fourteen years. Yes this is half and the best percentage since 1940 except for Billy Southworth who won three of five. Add in the Wild Card and Tony LaRussa has taken the cards to the playoffs almost 60% of the time. If you would look at divisional finishes in the past thirty years Tony’s team’s numbers are better than both Joe Torre and Whity Herzog.

Now perhaps we should look at records because in baseball, as well as most sports a .500 record is considered a winning season. Since LaRussa has taken reign of the Cardinals they have been under .500, a losing season, three times and the worst year having 72 wins. In this same time span the Pittsburgh Pirates have zero winning seasons and only three times have they won over 72 games.

I realize that we all want the Cardinals to win World Series after World Series, but that simply is not possible and winning the World Series should not be the sole success gauge of a team or a season. In this decade the Cardinals have won a World Series along with eight other teams. During this time the Red Soxs are the only team in MLB to win two and with twice the payroll, that does not seem to impressive for me. Some would say that the Red Sox have been the best team of this decade because of those two WS Championships, but by some to the logic in this comment section they only have a 20% success rate, so they suck 80% of the time then, and that would mean that the Cardinals have sucked for 90% of this decade. This seems like great logic to me and I can entirely understand how you people are fans of a sport where 96.66% of teams are failures and unsuccessful every single year.

One final note, if I remember correctly this past March there was not a single analyst that picked the Cardinals to win the Central Division, and most of them had decided that they would be bottom feeders. Sure, sure their all idiots and don’t know the game of baseball…wait a second, I think they know enough to get paid for talking about baseball, so… I also know that you are thinking well the Holiday and DeRosa trade is why the Cardinals won and has nothing to do with managing. Well, once again if memory serves me correctly, the Cardinals were contending right up at the top of the division with bottom feeder talent. All this to say; anyone who wants Tony LaRussa or Dave Duncan to leave the Cardinals organization is a nut job. They are the best in baseball and it will be a very sad day in St. Louis when they decide to hang it up or go elsewhere, and if you don’t have a freaking clue about what you are talking about I would suggest that you refrain from speaking or in this case writing. It will seriously help you image if people don’t know about you cluelessness.

Those who knock on TLR are fools or too young to understand what he does game in and game out. Those who blame TLR for being swept this year…seriously? Did Tony drop that line drive in game 2? Come on..you really look foolish with that statement. Tony does not run the team into the ground every year…in fact by playing the reserves more often than any other manager makes the team more fresh as the season progresses…the reason the Cards have fizzled the last few years down the stretch was lack of talent (minus this past season). This season late fizzle was due to lake of urgency up to and after clinching. The reason they lost in round 1 was not due to Tony but rather a missed line drive in game 2 plus lack of hitting with runners in scoring position, which cannot at all be blamed on TLR!