TOWER GROVE — Ignore the throwing error. Errors are going to happen. And Adam Wainwright pitched around it anyway as the Cardinals shut out the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday night. Ignore the throwing error and Brendan Ryan is putting on a defensive clinic at shortstop this week.

On one sharply hit groundball Tuesday night, Ryan sprinted to his left, snared the ball on the run past second base, went at least a stride — maybe two — into the outfield grass, spun and still fired in time to get James Loney. In the fourth inning, Ryan went to his right, near the lip of the outfield grass, backhanded a well-struck grounder, collected and nailed a throw to first in time to get Matt Kemp. And it’s not like Loney and Kemp are sluggish runners.

Ryan had two exceptional plays in two opposite directions and yet they were only two plays in a flurry of them made the past two nights by the St. Louis Cardinals’ shortstop.

After Ryan’s plays Monday night, manager Tony La Russa likened some of Ryan’s defensive traits to Ozzie Smith. Ryan pushed back saying his name didn’t belong in the same sentence as Smith’s.

“It was my sentence,” La Russa said when a reporter told him that Tuesday. “Good. I like humble.”

Shortstop has become a position of intrigue again around the Cardinals, what with Ryan playing the power of glove, newcomer Julio Lugo showing power at the plate and Khalil Greene hitting with power on his way back from a rehab assignment. Shortstop, specifically the defensive play of Ryan, seems like a good position to start today’s 10@10 …

1. One of the easiest to handle defensive metrics out there is John Dewan’s Plus/Minus, which simply adds one for every player a player makes outside of an assigned zone for his position and subtracts one for every play a position player misses within that zone. Ryan has recently popped into the leaders at shortstop with a +8. That ties him with Tampa Bay’s Jason Bartlett and puts him one behind former Cardinals shortstop Cesar Izturis’ +9. Bartlett has 686 innings at the position, Izturis has 468 innings at shortstop and Ryan has 447 2/3. In fact, Ryan has 192 assists at shortstop this season, which is 25 more than Izturis has. That has as much to do with the style of pitching staffs as it does the defense behind the pitching staff, but consider that Ryan is the only player with less than 500 innings at shortstop and more than 170 assists. For comparison, Edgar Renteria (the shortstop on strikeout-happy San Francisco) has 194 assists, only two more than Ryan has in 281 fewer innings.

2. Back in April, the 10@10 took a “Long-Range Look at Shortstop” and asked who would be the next infielder to spend two seasons as the starter at shortstop. With more than 3,700 people voting, the winner with 38 percent of the vote was … Khalil Greene. Things have changed. So probably has the readers’ answer. There is a new starter at shortstop, and a new name in the mix. Ryan is under control for next year; Lugo is signed through next year. Side with the glove? Side with the bat? Look for a better blend of both? Those are the themes in the background of today’s question:

 Loading …

3. Mark DeRosa hit his third home run in three games, and it was his sixth home run in the past eight games for the Cardinals. When it comes to quickest newcomers to five homers, DeRosa’s five home runs in his first 13 games as a Cardinal trailed only Jim Edmonds (10 games, five homers in 2000) and J.D. Drew (five homers, 12 games in 1998). A quick check of DeRosa’s total numbers this season with the Cardinals and Cleveland show that it would take a serious power outage for DeRosa not to set a career high for homers this season. He has 19 already, two shy of the career-high he set with the Chicago Cubs last season. He also has 60 RBIs, 27 shy of his career-high.

4. The Cardinals will try to minimize the use of the fifth starter as the off days start coming next week. Manager Tony La Russa said Todd Wellemeyer will first be available as a reliever Thursday, but if he’s not used for a few days he’ll get a chance to throw a side session and work his way into earning one of the other fifth-starter starts down the road. La Russa said the Cardinals have plotted out through August with a four-man rotation, but he hesitated to say how many times that meant the No. 5 starter would be needed because, as he pointed out, a rainout scuttles everything. Here, however, is a quick cheat sheet that shows how a five-man staff could operate through August:

• Chris Carpenter — 8/1, 8/7, 8/12, 8/17, 8/22, 8/28 … 6
• Adam Wainwright — 8/2, 8/8, 8/14, 8/19, 8/25, 8/30 … 6
• Joel Pineiro — 7/29, 8/4, 8/9, 8/15, 8/20, 8/26 … 6
• Kyle Lohse — 7/30, 8/5, 8/10, 8/16, 8/21, 8/27 … 6
• FIFTH STARTER — 7/31, 8/11, 8/18, 8/23, 8/29 … 5

One starter going on three days rest would also change all of that, and allow for the Cardinals to squeeze one more four-man turn into the month. The real gap, as you see, is in early August, where the Cardinals can go 14 games needing a fifth starter just once.

5. Hall of Famer Rick Hummel takes a look at how the Los Angeles Dodgers pushed their record to an MLB-best 25 games better than .500 and how all of that couldn’t combat the karma at Busch.

6. Two wacky notes this morning from the Elias Sports Bureau and ESPN about last night in baseball, both of which have a Cardinals’ connection: The Cardinals’ 10-0 shutout of the Dodgers was remarkable for many reasons — it was the 2,000th game between the two teams, for example — and one of them was the Dodgers had more hits than the Cardinals. It is the first time a team has had a double-digit loss in a shutout while outhitting the winner since 1991 when the Mariners defeated the Chicago White Sox, 10-0, and also had eight hits to Chicago’s nine. … Who needs Brett Wallace? Oakland Athletics third baseman — yes, third baseman — Adam Kennedy had five hits in the A’s 11-inning victory at Fenway Park. He is the first Kennedy, according to ESPN, to have a five-hit game at Fenway Park, deep in the heart of Kennedy Country. Kennedy also had a four-hit game at Fenway back in 2005. As ESPN writes: “The only other time a Kennedy had at least four hits in a game at Fenway Park was Bob Kennedy of the Indians … exactly 58 years ago, on July 28, 1951.”

7. Triple-A Memphis had a homer binge Tuesday during a 14-5 victory against Round Rock. Allen Craig and Khalil Greene, mentioned above, went back-to-back twice. Three of the Redbirds had two home runs: Craig, Greene and Tyler Greene. Jon Jay also hit a home run and tied a Memphis franchise record with five hits. The Memphis Redbirds hit five home runs Monday in New Orleans and followed with the seven Tuesday. The seven tied a Memphis professional baseball record. Khalil Greene had three of the 12 home runs. Craig also had three, continuing his July surge.

8. FARMNIK REPORT:Two of the three other affiliates in action Tuesday night were shut out. First baseman Andrew Brown had Class AA Springfield’s only hit. The S-Cards had seven walks and 10 strikeouts. Tony Cruz and Pete Kozma each had three strikeouts in the game. … Mahoning Valley shutout Batavia, 3-0. Michael Blazek pitched five innings and struck out six, but took the loss for allowing three hits and one run. It was unearned. … Palm Beach lost, 5-1, to Lakeland. Left fielder Chris Swauger drove in the only run with a solo homer, his 10th home run of his season (spread over two levels). … Opposing starter, Detroit farmhand Charles Furbush, struck out 10 PB-Cards. Blake King started for Palm Beach but didn’t finish the fifth inning. He struck out five, walked five, allowed five runs (four earned) and pitched 4 1/3 innings. … Back in Memphis, Trey Hearne made his Triple-A debut and it almost got lost in the homer show. Hearne was impressive. He pitched seven innings and allowed three runs on five hits. He only walked one and struck out six. Hearne isn’t an overpowering pitcher and scouts have long believed that Triple-A will be true test of his ability to work the edges of the strike zone without a blazing pitch, and he did allow three home runs on the homer-happy night. One start like that, even a win, should obviously not be confused with capital-S success, but it’s a good start. Hearne is  11-3 with a 3.11 ERA in 22 games (16 starts) this season.

9. St. Charles native and Chicago White Sox native Mark Buehrle set a major-league record by retiring 45 consecutive batters, snapping the previously record of 41 held by two pitchers who did it in decidedly different ways than Buehrle and his run of perfection. One of the pitchers who held the record was Bobby Jenks, Buehrle’s teammate, who did it as a reliever in 2007. The other pitcher was Jim Barr, who started the 1972 season as a reliever for San Francisco and moved his way into the starting rotation. Barr retired 41 consecutive batters between hits in two consecutive nine-inning shutouts. He allowed five hits total in those starts, but those bookended his record setting run of outs. The second start was against the Cardinals at Busch Stadium. In the seventh inning of that game on August 29, 1972, right fielder Bernie Carbo doubled to end Barr’s run.

10. Um, has Wainwright put himself in the Cy Young conversation? With all the talk of his arm slot and the lack of use of his fastball, Wainwright has settled into a groove (fastball early, curveball later) and has steadily climbed his way into the league leaders are several of the Cy Young indicators. Wainwright is tied for the NL lead with 12 wins, locking Ws with Jason Marquis and Matt Cain. Wainwright’s ERA is seventh at 2.80. Cain is the only one with as many wins and a better ERA. On ESPN.com, the stat mavens there keep track of what they call the “Cy Predictor”, an equation devised by Bill James and Rob Neyer. Wainwright is fifth on that list, and fourth when you subtract the reliever ranked ahead of him.

An article recently on ESPN.com about the mystical barrier of 100 pitches showed that Wainwright also, entering his 111-pitch win Tuesday night, ranked sixth in the majors with a 106.9 pitches per start.

-30-