(Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
On Tuesday, manager Oli Marmol and outfielder Tyler O’Neill created quite a stir in the St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse.
After O’Neill was thrown out at the plate by Ronald Acuna Jr., Marmol criticized him for a lack of effort.
O’Neill fired back and the issue became public, generating some bad press for the Cardinals.
Some have pointed out that O’Neill could have run faster, while others have criticized Marmol for making the issue public.
But there is much to unpack about this situation.
On MLB Now, analyst Brian Kenny chimed in and talked about the issue at hand for the Cardinals and every possible factor that should be considered when reading into it.
BK chimes in on Tyler O’Neill, the Cardinals and the concept of cost-benefit analysis. #MLBNow pic.twitter.com/leJPYjKzfW
— MLB Now (@MLBNow) April 6, 2023
Kenny brought up some interesting points about how running hard can sometimes force errors before taking a look at O’Neill’s sprint speeds.
A look at StatCast provided an in-depth analysis of things.
Kenny made a fair point that O’Neill wasn’t being lazy and was running fairly hard, but also took note of the fact that he kicked it into gear too late and was ultimately thrown out.
O’Neill’s sprint speed in 2022 was 15th in all of Major League Baseball.
He got from one base to the next by covering 29.8 feet per second.
The average was 27 feet per second.
On Tuesday, he covered 28 feet per second, going below the average from 2022.
The average amount of time it took to get from second to home in 2022 is 6.94 seconds.
The average this year is 6.99 and O’Neill moved in 7.31 seconds, slower than the average last year and this year.
Kenny closed his statement by saying that it would have been better if the situation had been handled internally, but that Marmol wasn’t exactly wrong to point out that the team has standards that were not met.
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