The Cardinal Way must remain despite the youth movement

For decades, The Cardinal Way is what guided the St. Louis Cardinals to success both in the regular season and in the playoffs. From 2001 through 2019, only the New York Yankees had a better winning percentage (.583) than the Cardinals (.555).

This success hinged on the presence of homegrown players who knew how to play Cardinal baseball -- that is grinding out at-bats, going for the extra base, moving the line, focusing on fundamentals, and holding a team-first mentality. Sure, players like Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds, Matt Holliday, Adam Wainwright, and others were stars of the game at the time, but there were exponentially more "little guys" who were making key contributions.

Players like Ryan Ludwick, Mark Mulder, Jon Jay, David Freese, Allen Craig, Kolten Wong, and Matt Carpenter filled in the periphery while the stars shone brightly. These young players had veteran leaders to show them how to play the game the right way, and they in turn passed it on to future groups of prospects and young players.

Somewhere along the line, however, The Cardinal Way was lost.

This isn't to say analytics and advanced metrics don't belong in the game. That's foolish. These statistics allow players and coaches to identify weaknesses in the opponent and take advantage of them. What was lost for the organization was the chain of succession.

From 2019 through 2024, the Cardinals struggled to thrive in the regular season the way they did prior. 2022 was the organization's best season in that stretch. What did the team that year have on the roster? Three long-time Cardinals in Adam Wainwright, Yadier Molina, and Albert Pujols leading the way. Other stars like Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt had career performances, and young players like Brendan Donovan, Tommy Edman, and Ryan Helsley started to flex their muscles.

Now, the organization is aiming to field a young roster for 2025. This is innately a good thing. With players like Masyn Winn, Jordan Walker, Lars Nootbaar, Brendan Donovan, and Nolan Gorman needing to prove their value, this will be a good opportunity for them to show their prowess. We need to see what these young players have for the future.

The organization must be careful, however. Remove too many veteran leaders from the roster, and the team's identity could be lost. Former Cardinal Kolten Wong discussed this while appearing on Foul Territory recently.

I think that's where they need to get back to. Not worry so much about analytics. Their niche was always being old school small ball. You always had the big hitters here and there to drive in the runs, but youd had Jon Jays, you had me...we knew our role. Now, I think with analytics, sometimes it muddies the water a little bit, it gets a little dirty, and you don't realize what your true identity was. Getting back to the Cardinal Way I think will be a big thing for this organization.

At the moment, the longest-tenured player on the roster is Ryan Helsley, someone who is rumored to be on the trade block this offseason. Brendan Donovan is the only other long-time homegrown player on the roster. Veterans Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, and Nolan Arenado weren't brought up in the Cardinals' system, so they aren't as familiar with this mentality as past leaders of the team were.

It's a good thing the Cardinals are leaning on their young players in 2025; they have a lot to prove. However, maintaining a pipeline of guys who know The Cardinal Way is imperative to long-term success within the organization. That mentality can't be lost within this reset.