The Cardinals Way: How One Team Embraced Tradition and Moneyball at the Same Time

The Cardinals Way presents an inside look at the St. Louis Cardinals, a team that has emerged as the model organization in the MLB through developing young talent and embracing analytics.

The St. Louis Cardinals have experienced the kind of success that is rare in baseball. Regarded by many as the premier organization in Major League Baseball, they not only win, but do so with an apparently bottomless pool of talent, one that is mostly homegrown.

Despite years of phenomenal achievements, including going to the World Series in 2004 and again in 2006, the Cardinals reinvented themselves using the “Cardinal Way,” a term that has come to represent many things to fans, media, and other organizations, from an ironclad code of conduct to the team’s cutting-edge use of statistic and analytics, and a farm system that has transformed baseball.

Baseball journalist Howard Megdal takes fans behind the scenes and off the field, interviewing dozens of key players within the Cardinals organization, including owner Bill DeWitt and the former general manager John Mozeliak. Megdal reveals how the players are assessed and groomed using an unrivaled player development system that has created a franchise that is the envy of the baseball world.

In the spirit of Moneyball, The Cardinals Way tells an in-depth, fascinating story about a consistently good franchise, the business of sports in the twenty-first century and a team that has learned how to level the playing field, turning in season after successful season.