Yadier Molina, the retired legendary catcher, enters 2024 as the St. Louis Cardinals’ special assistant to the president of baseball operations.
What Molina's day-to-day role with the Cardinals is has been a little unclear. Team president John Mozeliak made an effort to clarify during an on-stage interview Saturday, according to Benjamin Hockman of STL Today:
“‘He's going to be someone that gets his feet wet,' said Mozeliak, the president of baseball operations.
Cardinals manager Oli Marmol, coming off a 71-91 season, is in the final year of his contract. Molina has stated his wishes to someday manage in the majors. Is Mozeliak concerned about possible friction?
“Not really, but I can understand why there would be a question,” Mozeliak said. “It could become real, we’ll find out, but I don't think entering into this would make sense to approach it that way. Clearly, I’m a big advocate for Oli, I believe in him, but we also recognize like last year was not good. So we have to make some adjustments. We (need to) do things differently. Hopefully we do it in a successful manner.”'
The Cardinals president continued to clarify Molina's role:
“I plan on meeting with him in terms of kind of letting him understand how we think about player acquisitions, how we value players — and just really give him an introduction to that side of the business. Of course, anything you can do to help some of our younger catchers, we're going to welcome it.”
The Cardinals finished 71-91 last season, putting them in last place in the NL Central.
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