Skip's Blog

Buster Olney is on vacation this week, so for the second straight year, guest columnists are writing the lead of his column in his absence. On Sunday, D-backs reliever Brad Ziegler talked about MLBPA head Michael Weiner, who is battling cancer. Today, A's reliever Sean Doolittle discusses what it's like to play for the team synonymous with "Moneyball."

Not every player gets to shine under the bright lights of the Big Apple or the bright sun of Los Angeles. Not every player lands on a roster filled with marquee names with a total price tag that rivals the GDP of several small countries. And not every player gets to play in a baseball cathedral filled with more than 30,000 fans every single night.

As a member of the small-market Oakland Athletics, this is my story.

My first memories of baseball are of the A's. When I was a kid, my father was stationed at Castle Air Force Base in Merced, Calif., for three years and we had season tickets at the Coliseum. My dad would drive my younger brother Ryan (now a pitching prospect in the A's organization) and me the 90 minutes out of the San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area to watch the A's: McGwire, Canseco, Henderson, Eckersley, Stewart (and yes, current A's coaches Mike Gallego and Curt Young); it was quite the introduction to baseball.

I can still remember the rush of excitement I would get as we neared the Coliseum on Interstate 880 and I could see the lights of the stadium on the horizon. I appreciate the way things have come full circle for me, and I still get that feeling everyday on my drive to the ballpark.

Of course, back in those days, I dreamed of lacing up the white cleats and playing for the Athletics. But I never could have imagined what goes on behind the scenes and how much fun it is to wear the green and gold.

9:14 a.m. -- I get that feeling as I cross over the hill on I-880 and catch my first glimpse of the O.co basking in the morning summer sun.

9:31 a.m. -- Oakland may be the Sunny Side Of The Bay, but it rained last night and we have to pull the tarp off the field so the infield can dry out for tonight's game. When you share a home with an NFL franchise, sometimes the playing surface needs a little extra TLC.
9:43 a.m. -- Head back up to the clubhouse to clean my spikes. It takes a lot of work (and Scrubbing Bubbles) to keep our spikes looking so white.

9:58 a.m. -- Leave the stadium to run some errands.

10:19 a.m. -- Pick up my uniform at the dry cleaners. (How else do you think we keep our home whites so bright?)

10:32 a.m. -- Stop by the barber shop to get my beard trimmed. In addition to white cleats, facial hair is another Athletics' tradition that this Oakland team continues to carry on.

11:07 a.m. -- Swing by Sports Authority to pick up a Nike Dri-Fit shirt (it's not like we just have them laying around all over the clubhouse) and some Nike compression leggings. You have no idea how cold it gets in the bullpen at the Coliseum.

11:45 a.m. -- Lunch with fellow lefty reliever, and foodie, Jerry Blevins. I have the taste buds of a 9-year-old, so I hope he picks a place that serves pizza or chicken fingers.

12:36 p.m. -- Jerry finally finishes his beet salad and I've finished moving mine around to make it look like I ate it. I'll just eat lunch at the field like I always do (PB&J!).

12:56 p.m. -- Head back across the Bay Bridge to Oakland.

1:10 p.m. -- Stuck in traffic on the bridge.

1:26 p.m. -- Still stuck in traffic on the bridge.

1:39 p.m. -- @$#%^?•&!

1:57 p.m. -- We arrive at the O.co Coliseum. Since Jerry drove it's my turn to feed the meter, but I don't mind. I'm just so happy to finally be out of the car.

1:59 p.m. -- Coco Crisp plays his newest mixed CD on a Sony boom box in the middle of the clubhouse, giving everyone a break from the A.J. Griffin's guitar playing. (He's actually really good, but don't tell him i said that!)

2:01 p.m. -- I make a sandwich and join fellow relievers Jesse Chavez and Dan Otero and catcher John Jaso in doing the USA Today crossword puzzle. There's only one copy of the paper to go around so we have to share, but it's OK, because with four or five of us working on it we can actually finish it. Sometimes.

2:21 p.m. -- This is a very close-knit team with a lot of chemistry and that can be seen throughout the clubhouse on days like this. There's a group of guys sitting in front of the TV watching "Maury" (the satellite signal doesn't get through all the concrete at the Coliseum so we only have basic cable), other guys play cards or backgammon.

3:02 p.m. -- As the media trickles in to talk to players before the game, the players prep for the media in the mirror in the bathroom. Josh Donaldson styles his mohawk. Derek Norris combs his mullet. Griffin tries to decide whether his long blonde locks look better in a pony tail or down on his shoulders. Grant Balfour gels his hair. Seth Smith checks the progress of his facial hair while Josh Reddick brushes his beard. Part of being an Athletic is being able to be yourself and express some individuality within the framework of the team environment.

3:34 p.m. -- Donaldson is still in the bathroom working on his mohawk.

3:45 p.m. -- Time for stretch. A lot of opposing teams think it's a little strange that we wear our green and gold Zubaz out on the field for stretch and batting practice, but they were team issued and they're really comfortable so I'm actually surprised more teams haven't adopted them.

4:02 p.m. -- Throw.

4:14 p.m. -- Run. It's not so much conditioning as much as it's a race that Balfour always has to win.

4:23 p.m. -- We use the 10 minutes or so we have before the hitters start taking batting practice to rake the bullpen mounds and get the game mound ready for the game.

4:30 p.m. -- You know how there's always a swarm of little kids trying to catch the fly balls during the Home Run Derby? We, as pitchers, do that every day in batting practice. Except we don't get a chance to catch that many fly balls between Brandon Moss and [Yoenis] Cespedes hitting them out of the stadium and Bartolo Colon running everything else down.

5:59 p.m. -- Coco puts the "pregame mix" CD on the boom box in the middle of the locker room. This is the signal to be quiet and get focused on the game.

6:56 p.m. -- National anthem. Tonight's version is performed by Huey Lewis and the News. In the '90s. It's a recording.

7:06 p.m. -- First pitch.

As a relief pitcher, you have a lot of down time. On this particular night, scanning the crowd, you can't help but notice the empty seats, or the big green tarps that cover thousands more of them. For most players this would be disheartening, but you realize that the fans who have shown up, the fans we do get, are some of the most loyal and passionate fans in all of MLB. And they prove that as they bring the Coliseum -- a crumbling concrete castle -- to life with chants of "Let's Go Oakland." They come early -- to Bernie Lean when Coco leads off, and stay late -- to fist pump, overcome with Balfour Rage.

You realize that the other guys on the team are your family. There's a lot you can learn about a guy from a conversation on a long bus ride to an away series in Seattle or playing video games together in a Best Western or Days Inn on the road somewhere. Rather than complain about our aging stadium or low national profile, we've embraced it and it's become a part of our identity. We play hard, with a chip on our shoulder, like we have something to prove, like a little brother playing against his older sibling.

Satire aside, we are proud to play for the A's and happy to call Oakland home. We might have to pay for our soda in the clubhouse (you guys saw Moneyball, right?), and our clubhouse might have plumbing issues (you guys heard about that flood, right?), but at the end of the day our clubhouse is full of guys grateful for the opportunity the A's have given them. Not only do they want to make the most of it, they also want to have a little fun too.

11:12 p.m. -- It looks like most of the guys are done eating dinner so if you'll excuse me, I have to go help do the dishes.

By Ricky Benichak [August 14, 2013 at 10:49am CST]

Ricky Benichak is a baseball operations intern with the Cincinnati Reds. A native of Bethany, CT, he relocated to Ohio following the completion of his Bachelor's degree at the New York University Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management, and a two-year stint as a finance intern with MLB Advanced Media. Ricky was kind enough to share some of his experiences and future aspirations with MLBTR.

My responsibilities with the Reds

One of the greatest perks of a baseball operations internship, at least in my experience, is that every day presents different challenges and experiences. If I had to identify what a normal day would look like, it would be something like this: update the statistics for our BATS video software, chart a game using that same software or capture pickoff moves to help our Major League coaching staff or players for an upcoming series, compile advance scouting reports, and work on research assigned to me by my bosses. I would say about 30-40% of my workload consists of research, some targeted by my superiors based on the needs of the team, some targeted based on my own interests. I have used that time to further look into the ROI of international players, waiver claim and DFA analyses, valuation of farm systems, and aging curves for defensive abilities.

My internship started back in January, so the definition of a normal day has changed greatly over that time. At one point, my days consisted of arbitration research, eventually becoming spring training-based assignments, preparing for the Rule 4 Draft, and now that the season is over two-thirds through, I’m looking forward to what hopes to be a deep playoff run for the Reds.

My favorite work experience

I think my “welcome to baseball operations” moment was fittingly my first day with the Reds, back in January. Having relocated to Cincinnati only a few days earlier, I was getting adjusted to my new life in a new city, and still, work was among the biggest of my worries. I worked in finance for MLB Advanced Media for the past two years, so I didn’t know what to expect of my first position with a team. Hours into my first day, I was sitting in an arbitration conference between Reds baseball operations staff members. With the deadline to exchange figures a few days away and a potential hearing weeks away, it was early on in the process. It was more of an opportunity for the team to establish parameters on the desired salary of its arbitration-eligible players and to formulate the statistical arguments to hopefully get to these figures. I recall reading about the procedures of arbitration, but until I experienced it firsthand (although this was not a formal arbitration hearing), I never fully grasped the extent of research that goes into it. Like a game of chess, you want to think a few steps ahead, recognizing that your own strategy includes an understanding of the moves that can be used against you.  

The best advice I have received

Before coming to Cincinnati, the one thing that I was most frequently told by baseball operations executives was to play the game as long as possible, as that would best help me understand and evaluate players. It makes sense, but for someone who has never played the game at a high level, the advice isn’t really applicable. In some cases, this advice was delivered to me as somewhat of a be-all end-all statement on how to get hired by a team. It wasn’t until a conversation with my parents that I realized the argument of playing baseball in order to best understand baseball is like arguing that you must be a criminal to be a good defense attorney. That’s one piece of advice that I’ve never really accepted.

Perhaps it’s because I have never listened so intently to a person, but a current GM once told me the most valuable trait he identified in entry-level baseball operations personnel was an ability to contribute immediately. More practically speaking, have some type of research and analysis that shows a deep level of understanding of the game.

I think a lot of people are very protective of their knowledge and the work they produce, but you can make a much stronger case of your skills if it’s in writing. Sure, there is a risk that you might not get credit for that work, but the reward is that a team understands that if you can come up with one compelling baseball idea, there is a likelihood that you can come up with many more.

The first steps to getting that job or internship in baseball

Once again, if you can show you can contribute immediately to an organization, that is golden. Find some particular skill or area of research and own it. If you’re a player or former player, be able to easily communicate the skills you look for in players. If you have aspirations of becoming a sabermetrics savvy professional, know every statistic and how each statistic helps you answer a question, and definitely learn SQL. If rules and regulations are your interest, know the current CBA and league rules front to back. I think the biggest differences between high-level and low-level professionals in a baseball operations department are opportunity, leadership, and most importantly, communication skills. However, in breaking into the industry at the entry level, the more technical skills can help set you apart.

It’s also important that you have mentors. I had mentors when I went to college at the NYU Tisch Center where I studied sports management –- they helped me get opportunities that eventually led to me getting hired by the Reds. Not all of us have parents or friends in the industry, so it’s important to build your network as soon as you can. It’s as simple as sending an email or having a phone call. People love to talk about themselves and their experiences, and those who work in baseball operations are no different.

In pursuing an opportunity, a prospective employee should have the right mindset as well. It’s in our nature to think big and expect big. When I was initially looking for jobs with teams, I had this grandiose vision that all 30 teams would be interested in me and my abilities. I couldn’t have been more wrong, but there was a great lesson in that misconception. The reality is that you aren’t looking for 30 jobs or even a dozen jobs, rather you are looking for one team to listen and value the contributions you may bring. Discouragement and disappointment are a part of the cycle in finding employment, but you must take it in stride, and remember the big picture. The satisfaction in getting that first position in baseball is unparalleled.

My future aspirations

I think most baseball operations professionals –- whether or not they would openly admit to it –- dream of becoming a general manager. I don’t see myself any differently than the majority, but I am cognizant with the reality that there are only 30 GM chairs and many, many more people looking to sit in them.

Dreams aside, I honestly have no idea where I am going to be once the season ends, but for now my main focus is getting as much as possible out of my internship with the Reds. It can be nerve-wracking not knowing where I’ll be come next January, but that’s the nature of the beast in this industry. Before getting that first full-time baseball operations position, many will spend a few years interning. The way I see it though, interning is like the proving ground for baseball operations. I’m likely headed that path for another few years, and if anything, it could be a blessing in disguise to get the opportunity to work for a variety of teams and live in different cities. The life of a baseball operations intern offers few guarantees, but what keeps me going is thinking about all of the other types of occupations I could be doing, and how much more interesting baseball is to me. You could tell me a million times that I am not going to make it to GM or even garner a baseball operations assistant position, but that only fuels the fire. I’m willing to stick it out, and hopefully I’m off to a great start here in Cincinnati.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/56835048/?tcid=tw_share

ST. LOUIS -- Let's start with the undisputed fact: The St. Louis Cardinals are doing everything a Major League Baseball team is supposed to do well.

The Cardinals won the World Series in 2011, came within a game of the National League pennant in 2012 and currently sit three games out in the NL Central in 2013, leading the NL wild card chase. If this sounds familiar, it should. The Cardinals made the playoffs six times between 2000 and 2006, winning a pair of NL pennants and the 2006 World Series.

Those two eras have in common the ownership of Bill DeWitt, whose group purchased the Cardinals in 1996 for $150 million. But the two teams were built very differently.

"We were able to make trades for Jim Edmonds, and Mark McGwire, and Scott Rolen, and Darryl Kile," said DeWitt, as we discussed the evolution of the franchise during an hour-long interview in his Busch Stadium office last Friday. "Really key players who had great seasons with us, and really elevated the franchise over that period of time. But we could see the landscape changing."

What those Cardinals teams sacrificed in the process of building a winner through trades and free agency was any semblance of a farm system as pipeline for talent to ultimately help the Cardinals win.

On the 2004 Cardinals, of the top 14 position players ranked by plate appearances, one had been drafted and developed. Other than that one -- Albert Pujols -- every player on that list had either been acquired via trades (six players), free agency (six players) or the Rule 5 draft. It was no different on the pitching side. The Cardinals pitched 1,453 full innings in 2004. Of those, just 65 came from players they drafted and developed.

The industry noticed. Baseball America ranked the Cardinals between 28^th and 30^th in MLB in organizational talent each year from 2002-2005.

"We always pressed the draft, and were aggressive in the draft in that era," DeWitt explained. "We signed [J.D.] Drew, and [Rick] Ankiel, players like that, who other clubs either stayed away from, or drafted and didn't sign. And we felt that was a way to build while we were winning. But there wasn't a lot of depth to that, because when you sign free agents, you give up draft choices, and when you make deals, generally, you're trading younger players."

It is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to see the expiration date for this kind of team-building came roughly when the new collective bargaining agreement took effect in 2011. No longer was it so easy to pay extravagant draft bonuses, particularly for successful teams, thanks to a sliding scale and harsh penalties now in place for teams that exceeded their draft budget. And more teams with better financial resources, thanks to expanded television revenue, were keeping their own players, depressing both the trade market of would-be free agents and, ultimately, the free agent pool as well.

That's obvious now, looking back from 2013. But the Cardinals changed direction nearly a decade earlier, in the midst of extraordinary on-field success. And they've continued, despite greater emphasis on the future, to provide fans with a consistently excellent present.

"I would say in the 2002-2004 timeframe, when we really had good clubs, through 2006 ... everything looked great, but I knew we really didn't have the system to continue that tradition of winning," DeWitt recalled. "So the goal there was to keep winning, but to build at the same time. And we were fortunate enough to be able to do that."

This is the kind of Midwestern understatement that I heard from everyone I talked to in the Cardinals' organization. So let's allow the facts to do the bragging for them.

The 2013 Cardinals produced nine of their top 12 players in plate appearances through their farm system. A 10th, David Freese, is an honorary development product, having come over in a trade for Jim Edmonds from the Padres without having advanced beyond A-ball.

The same is true of Cardinals pitching. Of their top 16 pitchers in innings logged this season, 12 were either drafted or international free agents, developed through the system.  

The level of pitching depth the Cardinals currently enjoy within their system was illustrated by what they went through last week, in a trying series against the Dodgers. Shelby Miller, a first-round pick in 2009, exited the game two pitches in after getting a baseball lined at his elbow. The Cardinals inserted Michael Blazek, a 35^th-round pick in 2007. Later in the game, Keith Butler, a 24^th-round pick in 2009, helped get the Cardinals through a forgettable 13-4 loss. Needing a starter, the Cardinals called up Carlos Martinez, 21, an international free agent with an astonishing fastball. But Martinez, too, exited his start early, his hand cramping up in the fifth. Not to worry: The Cardinals had another four pitchers on hand to finish the game: Seth Maness, Sam Freeman, Blazek and Kevin Siegrist, all of whom were drafted and developed by the team. To top it off, after the game, manager Mike Matheny announced the Cardinals would be recalling Michael Wacha to start on Saturday.

Wacha, a talented hurler in his own right, can't break into that regular rotation, nor can Trevor Rosenthal (2009 draft pick), a minor league starter with 13 strikeouts per nine out of the bullpen this season, nor can Maness (2011 draft pick), who walked 10 batters total in 169 2/3 minor league innings in 2012 -- nor can many other pitchers from the absurd bounty the Cardinals currently enjoy.

In 2013, Baseball America's organizational talent rankings ranked the Cardinals first.

So, to summarize: An overwhelming amount of pitching prospects, enough to weather the enormous attrition rate in the profession. Hitting talent good enough to populate most of the lineup and bench, and more waiting in the wings, like Oscar Taveras, an outfielder ranked third in all of baseball among prospects by Baseball America and MLB.com. And all of this is around to supplement a roster that last won fewer than 86 games in 2007.

You're probably wondering now the same thing I asked everyone I could find, top to bottom in this organization: How is this happening?

* * *

The answer to this question isn't a simple one. I didn't find someone dressed as Fredbird in a tiny office underneath Busch Stadium, spitting out players the Cardinals should acquire. Nor are the component parts alone responsible, though the coordination and support from ownership, the analytical component to player evaluation, the vital role played by the scouting department (not to mention the seamless cooperation between analytics and scouting), and a player development system with principles dating back to the 1930s all play vital parts.

What seems to set the Cardinals apart isn't any one of these things, but the extent to which they all work harmoniously.

One thing DeWitt inherited when he purchased the Cardinals 17 years ago, and which remained in place to help implement the renewed emphasis on the farm system, is a tradition and strategy for developing players the team drafts that goes back decades -- really, to the actual creation of the farm system itself.

That was a Cardinals invention, brought about by a Cardinals executive you might have heard of named Branch Rickey, in the 1930s. Put it this way: It isn't possible to have a deeper tradition in player development within today's system than the Cardinals do, because it's their system. But Rickey left the Cardinals for the Dodgers in 1942. So what does that have to do with the 2013 Cardinals, 71 years later? Quite a bit, it turns out.

Rickey had a protégé named Bill DeWitt Sr., whose son, when he bought the team, inherited a pair of employees first brought to the Cardinals by Rickey himself: Red Schoendienst, still coaching with the Cardinals at age 90, and George "The Professor" Kissell, who worked as a senior instructor in the minor leagues until he died in 2008.

It was Kissell -- widely credited with mentoring an incalculable number of players, including Joe Torre and Keith Hernandez, along with managers like Sparky Anderson and Whitey Herzog -- who put together a manual for player development, since updated but never forsaken, called "The Cardinal Way".

"He had ideas about how to play the game," Schoendienst said of Kissell last Wednesday outside the Cardinals' clubhouse. "And what he did, he had young kids coming in, who'd never been away from home before. He'd come in, and he'd be like a father to them. George knew how to talk to them. And it was a lot of fundamentals, sitting there, talking to them, what to do in rundowns, hitting the cutoff man. And they still do that."

Your browser does not support iframes.

I'm afraid I never did get to see the manual, but David Freese, who's done slightly more for the Cardinals than I have, made me feel better. He hasn't seen it, either.

"No, I haven't," Freese said, laughing at the question as we chatted after batting practice. "No, they have their own deal, and they do it right." He added, more seriously, "What they do, whether it's the front office, management, the coaching staff or players, you collectively get people that know what they're doing, know what they're talking about, know what they're teaching and know how to win."

Hitting coach John Mabry, who as a player was drafted and developed by the Cardinals while George Kissell still worked as a senior minor league coordinator, believes that the relationships Kissell worked to cultivate with young players -- and to make standard for those charged with turning young people into major leaguers -- were as critical as the focus on the smallest detail of on-field play.

"The way that he taught engaged and involved players," Mabry told me. "And that style of teaching is paramount. With George, you say it and then laugh, but love," Mabry said, clearly aware that love was not a word commonly thrown around next to big league batting cages. "George had a love for the game, a love for the people who play the game, a love for teaching the game, a love for understanding the game, and relaying that and teaching that to people."

When I asked Mabry what stood out for him about Kissell's approach, he said it was less a particular moment, and more that Kissell was so was constant.

"Every day," Mabry said of Kissell's influence. "There were instances every day. Personally, the way he rooted for me to succeed, more than I rooted for myself sometimes. Understanding that he gave, no matter what, his time, and that, to me, is more important than anything, ever, that somebody would care for you that much that they would take their time, and teach you what they knew."

Mabry is one of many hundreds who can attest to Kissell's dedication, and the Cardinals have strived to integrate this style into their managerial system at every level.

One man responsible for implementing The Cardinal Way system-wide is Gary LaRocque, a senior advisor for player development who came over to the Cardinals from the Mets in 2008. LaRocque stressed communication, with a particular emphasis on building personal relationships between players and staff, as paramount to developing talent.

"We spend a lot of time being extremely positive with our players," LaRocque told me in a phone interview on Monday. "We make it clear we believe they can reach for that next level. I would like to think that we work extremely hard in the system with our managers, making the players understand that the coaching staff, they're in it with the players. That's our lifeline for our major league club. So the emotional aspect is very important."

As LaRocque described that bond, it comes about by "follow-up and communication with a player, establishing a relationship ... It's not hard when a player's doing well, because the player's emotions are in check. But the minute you hit that speed bump, as a player, you need somebody there behind you."

That communication is just as critical between the major league club, front office and minor league staff.

"Our philosophy, and the way we approach each year is, our plan is put into place from the big leagues down," LaRocque said. "And we try to put into place continuity of instruction, and communication …

"An example would be player movement. Part of what I do daily is talk with all our managers, and know what they feel in terms of evaluating our players. So let's say we move a player. One of the things here is that nobody's caught by surprise. Whether it's a player from the lowest level up, we've established a plan that a player could reach a certain level if he's able to accomplish certain things and we're able to accomplish certain things. … But injuries happen, needs come up. Clearly, players are going to move.

"And to be able to coordinate that is to have everybody on the same page with it. It doesn't mean they all agree, that's important to note. And they all feel as if they can stand by their convictions, say what they need to say about a player, a move, and then we, collectively, move forward."

These are just fine words, if they aren't backed up. But the Cardinals employ people for a long time, people who, if they didn't feel part of the decision-making process, would have moved on. General manager John Mozeliak has been employed by the Cardinals since 1995. Assistant GM Michael Girsch has been with the Cardinals since 2006. Farm director John Vuch is in his 35^th year. Dan Kantrovitz has been director of scouting since just 2012, but he's in his second stint with the Cardinals, having worked for them from 2004-2008, not to mention having grown up in St. Louis, going to games "when Busch Stadium still had Astroturf," as he put it.

"I think we have a lot of really good people throughout our organization," Kantrovitz told me in a phone interview on Monday. "I'm equally amazed at the caliber of player our scouts can find as I am at the adjustments that happen under the watch of our coaches and instructors. And I think, putting it all together, it's a lot of people pulling in the same direction."

* * *

As tempting as it is to simply assign the Cardinals' current systematic success to a book or the development system alone, if that was all it took, the Cardinals wouldn't have needed to revamp the way they approached their player development, or promoted Mozeliak.

"There were great people who were here when we got here," DeWitt said. "And so the Cardinals had that tradition of development that we were able to build on. But you know, if you don't have the talent, all the development in the world won't get you good players."

And so the pursuit of better players began in earnest, with a pair of significant new pillars to The Cardinal Way.

"We had a shift in our strategy, to try to build our system, and we did it in a number of ways," DeWitt said. "We did it by accumulating draft choices. We avoided free agents that would cost us draft choices. And when we looked at re-signing our own players, the cost of re-signing a player was not just what we paid him, but the fact that we would pick up draft choices, too."

The organization's shift can be seen as last decade went on. In 2002, the Cardinals had neither a first- nor second-round pick. By 2005, thanks to this change in strategy, the Cardinals had two first-rounders, two supplemental first-rounders and two second-rounders. That's the difference between six of the first 78 picks in 2005, and not picking until the 102nd slot back in 2002. Nor was 2005 an outlier: The Cardinals selected five of the first 76 players in 2006, four of the first 82 in 2007 and four of the first 91 in 2008.

But as DeWitt explained earlier, systems can't be rebuilt merely by making big splashes at the top of drafts. And that's where the organization's increasing reliance on trying to see something in players that other teams didn't became critical.

"The other thing going on at that time was, there was a proliferation of information available, not just at the professional level, but at the college level," DeWitt said. "People got into statistical analysis, so there was more information available. And we made a real conscious effort to try to take advantage of that."

DeWitt described the timing of these two initiatives this way: "There was a convergence there, from a timeframe standpoint. Of course, John Mozeliak was through the whole process, and very much on the same page on this front, but I did hire someone from the outside, Jeff Luhnow, who came in and progressed to the point that we thought he should be the scouting director. And he really did a terrific job implementing the strategy, and vision we had."

Luhnow was hired by the Houston Astros to be their general manager, along with fellow Cardinals front office member Sig Mejdal, after the 2011 season.

But first came the 2007 draft.

The Cardinals have had massively successful drafts over these past few years, clearly, to have the number of drafted players they do on hand, ready to contribute. But in 2007, the Cardinals took 13 players who have gone on to play in the major leagues, from first-round pick Pete Kozma, this season's starting shortstop, to 38^th-round pick Adron Chambers, who was recalled earlier this month and singled in Tuesday night's game-winning run.

According to Chambers, it was the Cardinals who took his raw talent, and made him into a ballplayer.

"For me, I think it was strictly on instruction," Chambers said as he sat in front of his new locker. "I already knew what I could do. But I had great coaches -- I didn't know the game, I didn't understand the game."

In other cases, the analytics department, and their ability to recognize a potential steal later in the draft, has proven critical. Two examples on the current team are Matt Carpenter, the team's second baseman and most valuable player, per wins above replacement, and Allen Craig, who has seamlessly replaced Albert Pujols at first base. Carpenter was a 13^th-round pick in 2009, Craig an eighth-round pick in 2006.

"Thinking back to being a fly on the wall at the draft when we drafted Allen Craig, and being a part of that process, I think it was just when we were getting started with analytics, integrating it into amateur scouting," Kantrovitz said. "And that was a case where I remember Sig, who did really good work on the analytics side, had identified Allen as one of those guys who, relative to his peers, had done really well. And then I remember our area scout at the time, it's kind of funny, once Sig mentioned him, he said, 'Yeah, you're right! He can turn around a fastball as well as anybody.' So it was sort of an interesting situation, where you saw the marriage of what the stats were saying to what the scouts were saying.

"And then, there's a lot of players who fit that profile. Allen just happens to be one where it worked out."

The Cardinals took Craig, assigned him to the State College Spikes of the New York-Penn League, and quickly determined that he was playing out of position. Incidentally, that's one reason he fell to the eighth round, according to Mozeliak.

"I think he was mispositioned -- he was drafted as a shortstop, playing third, and a lot of people weren't sure of where his bat was going to take him," Mozeliak said of Craig. "I'd say by the time he got to Palm Beach, which was high-A, he distinguished himself as a pretty good hitter. And then, by the time he was at Double-A, I think everybody realized he was a major league hitter. And so, it wasn't instantaneous, and I'm just very glad we drafted him, because he's a special bat."

Every part of the Cardinals' system worked together on a player like Craig. It wasn't just that the Cardinals had an analytics department that found Craig; they also had a scouting department that reinforced the numbers. Their player development team figured out within weeks how to better deploy him in the field to maximize his ability to reach his ceiling as an offensive player. Their coaching helped him do so, providing continuity of instruction at each level. By Double-A, the front office understood that he was going to help them at the major league level with his hitting. And eventually, Allen Craig replaced Albert Pujols, franchise icon, at a fraction of the cost. Ownership stepped in, signing Craig to a five-year, $31 million extension this past March, buying out his arbitration years and at least one free agent season, while locking the team in with some cost certainty.

That kind of long-range financial planning can't happen without smooth coordination between Mozeliak and DeWitt, each of whom looks at the Cardinals not just today, but also through a three- to five-year window. That includes players in the system, major leaguers whose contracts are set to expire down the road and even potential acquisitions from other teams.

"The first question is, is it a replaceable asset?" Mozeliak said of the process of determing whether to invest in a long-term contract. "And, if the answer is yes, then you have to define how. If the answer is no, then that obviously puts a priority on finding a way to get it done."

In the case of Yadier Molina, the market didn't appear to hold a comparable catcher of his defensive and offensive skills.

"Trying to extend him last year, it didn't feel like we had a catcher coming that could fill the role he was providing for us," Mozeliak said. "We also looked at him as the most elite catcher in the game. ... So we made a full-court effort to get that done." And so they did: In March 2012, the Cardinals extended him for five years, $75 million.

In the case of ace Adam Wainwright, the Cardinals believed having a top-of-the-rotation pitcher of his caliber was by no means a certainty among their young arms, and moreover, those young pitchers wouldn't have Wainwright to mentor and serve as an example.

"We had arms coming, but we looked at Adam as a unique player to us. If you think back to the last 10-12 years, we've always had that anchor in the rotation, a legitimate number one, number two-type pitcher, who was universally respected, was a leader, people trusted him, believed in him. And that's what Adam is."

But finding "neutral ground on length and dollars," as Mozeliak expressed it, is far easier when he and DeWitt are having so many conversations ahead of time.

"Bill and I are always looking three-to-five years out anyway, so we knew when Waino was coming up, and we were both prepared to know, directionally, where this was going," Mozeliak said.

DeWitt echoed Mozeliak's characterization of their relationship.

"We do work closely together," DeWitt said. "Talk virtually every day, meet quite often. Always trying to look ahead, and not just at what we're doing tonight with the understanding that we want to compete three years down the road, five years down the road, who do we have coming. What do we need to do to make sure that, three to five years down the road, we don't have a bunch of 38-year-old players finishing their career, but not much coming behind them."

While the Cardinals are understandably proud of their current standing, no one is ready to declare that it will stay this way forever. The tactics that allowed the Cardinals to stockpile draft choices last decade, for instance, have largely been cast aside by the rules in the new collective bargaining agreement, though St. Louis earned a second first-rounder in 2012 for losing Albert Pujols, and a second first-rounder in 2013 for losing Kyle Lohse. Many players who, under the old system, could have earned Type B compensation, will instead leave with the Cardinals getting no draft picks at all.

But most of the factors that have allowed the Cardinals to win consistently while putting together a farm system the envy of the baseball world are still in place. There's George Kissell's legacy in player development. There's a scouting system and the analytics department, working together, the play of Matt Carpenter, Allen Craig and many others serving as reasons to believe in one another.

As Kantrovitz put it, "Our scouts understand that, if anything, some of the successes of Allen Craig and others reinforces to our scouts that our system works. And at first, if guys might have been leery of letting the data into the equation, I think having a little success with some of those guys has helped, from my standpoint, sell it."

The same is true as it relates to the recent track record of the Cardinals' scouts.

"One of the things in scouting is, you have to trust, and you have to listen to the opinions of your scouts," LaRocque said. "The phrase they hear me say all the time is, 'I want to know everything you know, so that I can make an informed decision.'"

And there's a partnership between a general manager in Mozeliak, who was extended this past spring through 2016, and DeWitt, whose ability to stay plugged in and fully informed has impressed his staff, and whose continued ability to invest in the team is brought about by a consistent revenue stream provided by a loyal fan base, even though the Cardinals are, for now, locked into a local television deal that is far below that of even some NL Central rivals.

"The fans drive everything here," said DeWitt, who added that the Cardinals are consistently in the top third in revenue, thanks to both a consistent three million-plus in attendance, and the ancillary revenue from the fact that so few of those tickets sold turn into no-shows. "We don't have a big market, in the sense of our core market, a New York, Chicago, L.A., those types of markets. So we know that if we have a good product on the field, the fans are going to turn out. So that's a great comfort, because we can project, if we're competitive, we're going to draw the attendance enabling us to sustain what we have."

In the meantime, Mozeliak is turning his attention beyond the players who will help the Cardinals this year and next, and is focusing on the wave of young talent to follow.

"I'm starting to look at what those players look like at [Double-A] Springfield and [High-A] Palm Beach, because, in essence, they're the ones who are going to be knocking on the door next year, and the following year. And so when you think about that, you are always trying to time it, for when you're going to get that complement player up."

As for Kantrovitz, the work to build toward the 2014 draft, and even the beginning of preparation for the 2015 draft, has begun in earnest, with analytics serving to narrow the pool of players for scouts to go out and then evaluate in person.

The Cardinals, though, aren't ready to declare victory.

"Look, let's be realistic," Kantrovitz said. "Once we graduate guys to the big leagues, we're not going to always be perceived as one of the top farm systems. We'll regress to the mean. And then hopefully, we'll be able to use the same ingredients that helped us get to this point to push us back up toward the top."

And DeWitt cautioned that just because the Cardinals have found something that works today, there's no guarantee that's what will work tomorrow.

"It's a very competitive business," DeWitt said. "And there's no assurance that, if you've got a good team, and a good system now, that you'll continue to do that. We're going to try, but there are others out there that are doing the same thing, and maybe have a new way of thinking about it that we haven't thought of, that allows them to beat us at the game. So we take nothing for granted here."

In other words, I asked DeWitt, he was worried that the next George Kissell might be employed by another team?

"Right," DeWitt said, laughing.

Kantrovitz stressed the need to keep on innovating, a logical strategy for the organization that once came up with the very organizing principle for player development that exists today.

"We've tried to innovate in different ways. We'll need to keep innovating in those ways, making those things better, as well as finding new ways. Because other teams are really smart, too," he said, laughing. "You know, there's a lot of really smart people out there. So I don't think we can say that what we're currently doing is going to keep working without tweaking it, improving it."

He's doing everything he can to make sure the Cardinals find the next great idea, too, and it gets filed along side the work of Rickey, and Kissell, and Hertzog, and Mozeliak in the next edition of The Cardinal Way. But it can't hurt that in the 2013 MLB reality, these Cardinals, by a fascinating combination of planning ahead and relying on their past, seem to have given themselves quite a head start.