There is a philosophy held by a certain segment of MLB General Management that I used to hate. It was perceived by many to be a commitment to mediocrity — to being just good enough to beat out the competition in the regular season and then trust to luck in the playoffs, hoping that statistical anomalies could allow the best teams to lose to inferior competition in best-of-five and best-of-seven contests.

It was a strategy for mid-market teams — clubs that couldn’t spend the kind of cash that the Yankees, Red Sox and the like could, yet had markets large enough to support some veterans, rendering an all-out “Moneyball” approach unnecessary. Teams like the Astros, Cardinals and Giants have been following such a strategy for years, some more openly than others. Giants GM Brian Sabean had even gone so far as to call the postseason little more than a “crapshoot.”

I never understood such a policy. I always thought that in sports you were either genuinely trying to win it all, or you weren’t — there was no middle ground.

Then St. Louis proved me wrong by parading their 83-win club through the playoffs and then down Market Street after winning the World Series over Jim Leyland’s Detroit Tigers. The Cardinals showed us all that maybe the regular season really is meaningless in this modern era of Wild Card baseball. But I’m not buying it.

So how, then, did it come to pass that St. Louis won it all with its roster of regular-season misfits and underachievers? Well, for one, you have to give credit to Cards GM Walt Jocketty, who pushed all the right buttons with midseason trades and acquisitions. He took chances on Ronnie Belliard, Preston Wilson and Jeff Weaver, all of whom turned out to be key contributors to the postseason reincarnation of the Redbirds.

Moreover, the team had several of its own players suddenly return to form late in the season. Centerfielder Jim Edmonds, third baseman Scott Rolen and shortstop David Eckstein all came alive when October rolled around. Their slumps and injuries had been big factors in dooming the Cards to their only slightly better than average regular-season showing. Perhaps their efforts are the best indication that St. Louis didn’t win with a bad team, but rather with an underachieving good team that got hot at the right time.

It’s too bad that this isn’t where the story of the 2006 Champs all ends. Maybe then I could believe that, in any given year, a bad team could catch fire at the right moment and finish as champions. And wouldn’t that give hope to us all? At least, all of us except for those Yankees fans still seething that any team with a payroll less than $100 million could finish on top.

But that’s only part of the story, because there was one area in which the Cardinals were truly among the elite in the major leagues. Manager Tony La Russa clearly proved to anyone who didn’t already know that he is one of the best. His brilliant job with the club in and leading up to the postseason saved St. Louis’ season. Just getting the team’s psyche back, after a horrendous late-season slump that almost knocked the Cardinals out of the playoffs, was a minor miracle. But La Russa kept his clubhouse focused and the players responded.

La Russa’s reputation as one of the best strategists in baseball has been reaffirmed. Not once was he clearly outmaneuvered in postseason play. But the single most brilliant aspect of La Russa’s playoff strategy didn’t actually begin in October — no, La Russa was making his move all the way back in June and July with his handling of young pitcher Adam Wainwright who developed into the kind of shutdown closer that is of vital importance to a team’s championship chances.

Anyone who followed the Cardinals in 2006 knows that the biggest lie going into October was that the injury to closer Jason Isringhausen would prove detrimental to the team’s chances. In reality, Isringhausen’s absence was a relief to St. Louis fans who had sweated through virtually every ninth inning the veteran pitched. There were calls for him to be replaced by Wainwright — clearly the team’s best reliever — throughout the summer and into the fall. But La Russa kept his cool, and kept the rookie under wraps until the games really counted. And suddenly the Padres, Mets and Tigers found themselves facing a closer they were relatively unfamiliar with, a player they probably hadn’t studied too much as just one among many bullpen pitchers during the season. But now, he was dropping his big curve over the plate for strikes and looking virtually unhittable.

So the next time someone tells you the Cardinals got lucky, or that theirs was the worst team to win a championship in decades, remember that their manager, at least, began earning his World Series ring all the way back in July. Because Tony La Russa isn’t just a step or two ahead of the next guy — he’s in the lead by about four months.

Want to talk strategy? Email Denis at djgriff@stanford.edu.