St. Louis Cardinals Book review: The Cardinals’ Way

Due to the COVID-19 breakout, we do not have any St. Louis Cardinals baseball. That should not stop you from reading about Cardinals history. This is a book review of Howard Megdal’s 2016 book, The Cardinals Way.

With no St. Louis Cardinals baseball (or any sports on) and most of us staying home (if you’re not already, YOU SHOULD BE!), I figured why not start a book review of a St. Louis Cardinals – themed book I just finished reading. So here we go…

The Cardinals’ Way by Howard Megdal provides us fans a behind-the-scenes look at the St. Louis Cardinals front office. Specifically, Megdal researches how our favorite baseball team went from strictly traditional methods under Walt Jocketty to incorporating more analytically-driven data to the organization with the hires of Jeff Luhnow and Sig Mejdal among others.

Megdal starts off giving us a crash course history of Cardinals’ baseball from its near-infancy stages, where the team was 2nd best to the then-St. Louis Browns. Using first-hand primary sources, Medgal illustrates how from Branch Rickey’s farm system, to the teachings of George Kissell, to Bill DeWitt Jr. ‘s purchase of the Cardinals in the 1990s, to the hire of Jeff Luhnow, the Cardinals got to the forefront of today’s analytics revolution.

More from St Louis Cardinals History

• Reflecting on the 2013 Cardinals’ top 30 prospects
• Cardinals: The best Silver Slugger performances at each position.
• The St. Louis Cardinals are in rare company with this free agency stat
• What Happened to the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals? Matt Holliday Edition
• The St. Louis Cardinals avoided disaster with Jason Heyward

We learn from The Cardinals Way how, despite the on-field success of the Cardinals in the early 2000s, Bill DeWitt Jr. wanted the front office to be more innovative with player evaluation. First-hand interviews give the reader an inside look at the tension between the traditional section of the organization and Luhnow’s new-age analytics approach.

Megdal, a journalist by trade, is very concise with the information he obtained. His attention-to-detail is evident by the numerous amounts of long, drawn-out stories from those he reached out to. Perhaps too detailed, if such a criticism exists.

The Cardinals’ Way often reads like an article for a popular news outlet instead of a work of non-fiction. Perhaps, instead of bogging down the reader with so much minutia in quoted block texts, Megdal could elaborate more on the scenes in the Cardinals’ front office.

If you are serious about both Cardinals’ history and Moneyball, this book is for you, but reader beware, Megdal provides lots of information to take in.