[rink23]

Following an 8-2 loss to the Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals manager and general manager Mike Renkes announced he was stepping away from the franchise.
"It's been a rough season. We don't hit when the pitchers are doing well. And when the hitters have got it going, we can't stop anyone," Renkes said as his team dropped to 28-39 and 22.5 games behind the first-place Chicago Cubs in the National League Central Division.
"We've got some really good players on this team. But they've all have seemed to have regressed. I guess it's on me. My job is to make sure they are ready to play."
After opening the season, 14-11 in the month of April St. Louis has gone 14-29 and rank as the worst offensive team in the National League hitting just .202 with 252 runs scored in 68 games.
In his seven plus seasons managing the Cardinals, the team owned a record of 622-580 (.517 winning percentage) and made the playoffs four times.
They lost in a seven-game World Series to the Cleveland Indians in 2023 and defeated the Los Angeles Angels in seven games in 2025.
St. Louis reached the playoffs in 2029 as a wild card in 2029 but were eliminated in the division round by Cincinnati.
(I have no clue who will replace me, since I am not sure what I am going to do next. --
INSIDER NOTE: The number of strikeouts my team was incurring was just too much to deal with. Even players, who had decent eye and K-rates were striking out 25-30 percent of the time. It's just no fun to hear the umpire cry out "strike three" 13 to 20 times a game. I may even come back to this. The stress of the game just not even being competitive is not something I want to deal with at this moment.