Herzog turned out to be a bit of a throw back with his small ball philosophy. Although his record speaks for itself.
The game is so different today, that the analytics pretty much force players to fit into the mold of taking walks and hitting homers.
For comparison, the 1982 World Series winners had 200 stolen bases as a team, with Lonnie Smith leading with 68. The '23 team had only 101 steals, with Edman leading the team with 27, The '82 team had 142 sacrifice hits, the '23 Cardinals had only 50. Small ball (Whitey Ball) worked.
And, the Cardinals had Bruce Sutter, which might have helped a whole lot, too!
He focused on pitching, defense and speed.
The Ozzie Smith for Garry Templeton trade turned out to be pure genius. Both were stellar shortstops (Ozzie was better, though). But ozzie (wizard of oz) was magical at short; great on the bases, and one of the hardest “outs” I’ve ever seen. He must have spoiled 1000 2-strike pitches by fouling them off.
I really enjoyed Herzog’s style of baseball.
Three World Series appearances in the 80s with the Cardinals. Yes they only won one of those Series, but hey, it's tough to win the World Series.