ST. LOUIS – The “Cardinal Way” goes back nearly 100 years and, for generations, has provided the backdrop for how one of the game’s top teams views itself. But you don’t have to cite an old set of tenets to recognize that the way the St. Louis Cardinals played last season didn’t fit the pattern -- nor did it please many longtime observers.

“It was kind of hard to watch,” Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith said.

The 2016 Cardinals slugged, but they were sluggish. They hammered the baseball often, but they were ham-fisted in the field in equal measure. The style wasn’t entirely ineffective; they scored more runs than all but two National League teams and finished one game short of making the playoffs. But standards are high for a franchise that has won more world titles than any team besides the New York Yankees. The Cardinals’ front office has set its sights on changing the team’s style for 2017.

Newest Cardinal Dexter Fowler will provide better defense and baserunning than the club got last year. Jeff Roberson/AP Photo

Have they achieved the goal? The only notable position player addition thus far is center fielder Dexter Fowler, who is not an elite defender and won’t threaten Vince Coleman’s stolen-base record.

But general manager John Mozeliak has done things aimed to change the feel of the team. The subtraction of hard-swinging base cloggers Matt Holliday and Brandon Moss (with Matt Adams potentially on the trade block as well) could provide the Cardinals with better flow on the base paths.

The team seems committed this time to riding out Kolten Wong’s sporadic offense to benefit from his strong defense. Randal Grichuk was slightly below average in center field, but he has a chance to be a strong defender in left. Matt Carpenter figures to do less harm at first base than he did at second or third.

“We’ve always sort of maximized who we were, but I do think there has been an evolution of what we look like,” Mozeliak said. “This offseason was an opportunity to try to get ourselves back to the more fundamental aspects of our business.”

Let’s look at some of the changes, subtle and otherwise, to see how they could impact the team’s quest to get closer to its root values.

Fielding

Smith was one of the greatest shortstops of all time. He was an acrobat who did something rare in baseball: drew fans to the ballpark because they were excited to see the marvelous ways he would prevent runs. He played on some of the greatest-fielding teams in baseball history in the 1980s, when the Cardinals covered the expanses of old Busch Stadium with grace and speed. He and Keith Hernandez were among the best all-time defenders at their positions. Willie McGee looked ungainly chasing down fly balls, just as he did swinging a bat, but he was really good at both.

Smith is uniquely qualified to assess last year’s Cardinals' defense. He worked with the club last spring training and said he didn’t see the shaky fielding coming. He liked the work fielders put in during spring training but wonders if the absence of longtime infield instructor Jose Oquendo played a part in the Cardinals’ shaky fielding. The Cardinals had a -26.8 UZR, 24th out of 30 teams.

“One of the things that has always been a staple of this organization is the ability to catch and throw the baseball. When you do, you can get away with a lot of other things,” Smith said. “You can’t generate enough offense to make up for an inability to do that, and you can create a real problem for yourself. I know they came real close last year, but the way stuff was, I don’t think it needed to be as tough down the stretch, had the Cardinals caught and thrown like they normally do.”

Fowler had a positive DRS and UZR for the first time since 2008 last year, and the Cardinals think he was better than those numbers indicate. He positioned himself deeper last season, and it seemed to help. Grichuk rated as average in center field, but the Cardinals are hopeful that his athleticism will make him an elite left fielder. He certainly should be an upgrade over Holliday, who had a -8 DRS.

Still, the Cardinals have an extreme ground ball pitching staff, and a lot of their mistakes were on the infield. Oquendo has told the team he intends to work with minor leaguers next season, so that won’t fix things. Smith is 61 and seems happy with retirement.

Mozeliak gives manager Mike Matheny more autonomy than many GMs allow their managers nowadays, but it has been pretty obvious this winter that he would like to see Wong play more in 2017. Perhaps that’s in part because he wants to justify the five-year, $25.5 million extension he gave Wong last season, but it also relates to the team’s imperative to fix its fielding. Wong is young and athletic, which has been Mozeliak’s favorite word pairing all winter. He also batted .226 in April, .234 in May and .227 in June, an easy-to-read pattern that earned him a demotion to Memphis. The Cardinals figure to ride the infielder’s glove this year, even if it means enduring his at-bats.

Overall, it doesn’t seem the Cardinals have remade themselves, but the incremental changes could be sufficient to support pitching more effectively.

Baserunning

The Cardinals broke with their 1980s go-go persona the minute they brought Mark McGwire in from Oakland 20 years ago, but last year, they found a new low when it comes to sluggish baserunning. Wong and Stephen Piscotty led the team with seven stolen bases. That would have been a ho-hum week for Coleman.

The team’s sluggish baserunning might have been the hardest part for Smith to watch. The same goes for fans who grew up seeing the Cardinals fly around the bases.

“This has not typically been a stand-around team that waits to hit the ball out of the ballpark,” Smith said. “If you look at what last year’s forte was, it’s really not what Cardinals baseball is all about.”

Mozeliak and his front-office team don’t care much about stolen bases, but they do care about the inefficiency of their team’s offense, some of which was caused by poor baserunning last season. Of the 30 major league teams, only the Oakland A’s ran the bases less adeptly, per Fangraphs. With Holliday and Moss out of the picture and Fowler in, the Cardinals have only two true base cloggers: catcher Yadier Molina and whoever plays third.

Fowler, 30, hasn’t stolen more than 20 bases in a season since he was 23, but he rates as an excellent baserunner nonetheless. Wong and Grichuk are similar. Sometimes, simply paying attention to baserunning is a good way to improve it. The Cardinals figure to make fielding and baserunning staples of their spring-training discussions.

St. Louis stole 35 bases last year, fewer than one-third the number Hall of Famer Lou Brock swiped in 1974. If this team steals 50 next year but runs into fewer outs and advances the proper number of bases on hits, the Cardinals will be happy because that would be a major improvement.

Although adding one everyday player and shipping a couple of them out won’t dramatically change the Cardinals’ look, what we’ve seen this winter is that they don’t think they need wholesale changes. If they can improve incrementally in the less measurable areas of the game, the impact could show up in the only number they are ultimately held accountable for: wins.