Via BBTF, Anna McDonald explores the use of numbers by the St. Louis Cardinals:

“What we do is we don’t force-feed it, we don’t necessarily tell people ‘This is how you have to think and here’s why,’ but we do [give] subtle examples of why we think it is important, why we value certain things from an analytical side and how they can incorporate that into their day-to-day job. I assure you it’s not a [meeting] where we sit down there and have a statistical advanced class every spring training, because it is just not helpful.

“Player development, for example, they understand what they are doing; they understand their business and they’re good at it. I will say where analytics do come into play is two places. One is the amateur draft. It has become a really important tool for the success of our operation. The other part that comes into play is determining promotions and demotions in minor league players and, again, we do not solely make decisions on what these numbers say. We allow all the people we have working for us to have a voice in this, but we do have some guidelines that we use that help us make these decisions.”

That seems like the right tone and the right balance.