Sonny Gray Reveals What Led To Cardinals Winning Ways

The St. Louis Cardinals seemingly entered the season with the expectations surrounding them that they would be a struggling, rebuilding team. While they've used the young talent like a rebuilding team would, they haven't struggled.

In fact, the Cardinals are right in the middle of a National League Central division race about a third of the way through the season and nobody outside of St. Louis saw this coming.

Veteran righty Sonny Gray recently revealed the change in the team and clubhouse that helped lead to the Cardinals' winning ways and it seems a lot simpler than many might have expected.

“I think [the difference is] letting everybody be themselves. Not putting all this unreasonable amounts of pressure and [making] everybody be a certain way and this and that, just letting guys go play,” Gray said. “Trying to create an environment where they can thrive and feel comfortable on a daily basis and just letting everyone go play with no handcuffs or anything.”

Sometimes, a team can find themselves when they're able to play freely and that's exactly what Gray echoed.

The Cardinals don't have any pressure on themselves because the expectations were set so low coming into the season. There's not much more dangerous in baseball than a team with nothing to lose.

Going forward, the Cardinals could become buyers at the trade deadline which may result in a few key moves. More than likely, St. Louis will look for controllable talent on the trade market rather than expiring players. This would allow the Cardinals to hold onto their trade targets for multiple years of this rebuild rather than losing them to free agency.