The St. Louis Cardinals just suffered a tough National League Champion Series loss where they would fall to the Washington Nationals who went on to win the 2019 World Series. In the wake of the offseason beginning, they decided that a contract extension for manager Mike Shildt was the best course of action for the team. Besides Shildt, the team also extended President John Mozeliak and General Manager Mike Girsch.
The holiday season comes early in St. Louis: President John Mozeliak, GM Mike Girsch and manager Mike Shildt get multi-year extensions locking them up through 2022 with #STLCards.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) November 5, 2019
In parts of two years, Shildt has managed the Cardinals to a 132-99 record taking them to the NLCS in 2019. Shildt took over for Mike Matheny who had spent the time before that as manager. Matheny has moved on to manage the Kansas City Royals in 2019. Besides Shildt the front office will stay put as both the President and GM will be returning through 2022 after the announcement was made today. Shildt has only been a manager for just over a year, this will be his second full year as manager in the big leagues. The Cardinals skipper is also one of the 2019 finalists for the 2019 Manager of the Year Award which was taken home by Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker in 2018.
On the field, the Cardinals also learned today that veteran pitcher, Adam Wainwright intends to return and pitch in 2020. This will be Wainwright’s fifteenth MLB season, with Shildt finding ways to get him on the mound in 2019, it may become a little more difficult heading into 2020, but Wainwright still intends to return. Shildt managed a team whose pitching really managed to take off in 2019 with Jack Flaherty putting things together in the second half to help the Cardinals make the postseason push they did.
