Cardinals All-Quarter Century Team after 25 years of historic baseball

With 25 seasons of baseball under our belts in the 21st century, I wanted to celebrate the last quarter-century of St. Louis Cardinals baseball by putting together the best possible Cardinals team (and organization) from the year 2000 till now.

Over the last 25 years, the Cardinals are third in wins (2,257), tied for fourth in World Series titles (2), pennants (4), and playoff wins (69), lead the NL Central in division titles (11), and have done so on the backs of countless contributors who range from Hall of Famers to St. Louis legends.

On the field, the Cardinals have had all-time greats wear the Birds on the Bat during this quarter century, continued their long-standing tradition of developing impact talent, and swung major trades or signings for impact players. Those players have been coached by some of the best minds in the game as well.

Off the field, the Cardinals front office has featured some of the best leaders in the game, and if you look around the game of baseball over the last 25 years, the Cardinals fingerprints are all over so many of the most successful regimes since 2000, and their incredible success in the 2000s and early to mid 2010s influenced so much of where teams went with their philosophies.

This made this project a whole lot of fun, but also very difficult at the same time. There are a number of slam dunk, easy decisions that you'll see on this team, but there were also a lot of tough decisions that I went back and forth on. Ultimately, though, this team ended up coming out as an incredible unit.

When selecting this team, here are some of the guiding principles I tried to follow:
1. No "one-year wonders". Players needed at least a little bit of a track record to make the team.
2. With that, longevity was weighted heavily, but iconic moments and highest reached were used to break ties.
3. The team needed to make sense, so no one is playing out of position.

Here are all of the categories I will be naming in this "All-Quarter Century Team."

1. Infield
2. Outfield/DH
3. Bench
4. Rotation
5. Bullpen
6. Major League Coaching Staff
7. Front Office/Key Minor League Roles
8. Starting Lineup

Here is the St. Louis Cardinals Quarter-Century Team after 25 years of baseball in the 21st Century