Historically, the St. Louis Cardinals embrace change like a slug embraces salt. The franchise was slow to integrate, slow to sign free agents, and recent managers Tony La Russa and Mike Matheny weren’t always on board with baseball’s analytics revolution. Now, however, even the crankiest of diehards have accepted that some of the old ways weren’t the best ways. The Cardinals, for the most part, are getting with the times.
In 1986, Baseball Digest printed a list of 30 Unwritten Baseball Rules, beginning with “Never put the tying or go-ahead run on base” and concluding with “With a right-hander on the mound, don’t walk a right-handed hitter to get to a left-handed hitter.