HOUSTON — The National League continues to march toward what feels like a foregone conclusion, with even Wild Card-leading Colorado having opened a sturdy lead this past weekend. With less than two weeks remaining in the regular season, very little is left to be decided. The division leaders appear set. The best-record derby holds some appeal, but doesn’t carry the juice of a bona fide pennant duel. The grope for shock-value candidates shows how academic the National League MVP debate is, leaving only the RBI crown to be decided. The NL Rookie of the Year race has so many entrants that it’s more mosh pit than contest.

Where have you gone September races? Our coverage turns its hopeful gaze one:

The National League Cy Young Award.

It’s a three-man sprint to the finish that could command plenty more ink (pixels?) as October nears. Adam Wainwright had the big stage last night, pitted against the rival Chicago Cubs on national television with a magic number that could be hacked to 2. Though he pitched excellently and dominated with 10 strikeouts, he received a no decision in the Cardinals’ loss. That leaves him two wins shy of 20 with two starts remaining before the playoffs. He didn’t lose ground, but he didn’t gain it either.

Chris Carpenter pitched eight scoreless innings Saturday, but Ryan Franklin blew the save that cost Carpenter his 17th victory of the season. And San Francisco ace Tim Lincecum allowed five runs in four innings to the rival Los Angeles Dodgers.

There are three spots on the NL Cy Young ballot, and 32 members of the BBWAA — two in each NL city — have received the ballot. It’s due before a pitch is thrown in the postseason.

Those are likely the three names that will appear on every ballot.

The order, in true Tony La Russa pitching rotation fashion, is TBA.

The Last Race: The Cy Young Award, for a righthander

The race could really come down to what the voter values most. There’s the innings horse, Wainwright, whose ERA is at 2.59 and who leads the NL in wins. He had impressive streaks of consistent games with six innings and the 13 games with two or fewer earned runs. There’s the incumbent and Kid K, Lincecum, who has an NL-best 247 strikeouts, more than 40 better than Wainwright and 111 more than Carpenter. (”Strikeouts are fascist,” Wainwright recently said on our radio show, ‘The Hot Corner,’ borrowing from Bull Durham.) And then there’s the ace personified: Carpenter. He has the NL’s best ERA, a remarkable 16-4 record and a no-hit presence every time he takes the mound.

Lincecum and Carpenter are getting the press. Wainwright arguably has the best case.

At least that’s what Chicago Cubs manager Lou Piniella hinted this weekend before getting an eyeful of both Carpenter and Wainwright. The Cardinals’ candidates allowed Piniella’s club two earned runs in 15 combined innings over the weekend. The Cubs skipper’s take on the Cy Young race is where today’s 10@10 (Or, How I Spent My Morning Flight to Houston) begins …

1. Quoth Sweet Lou: “I think they would have a better feel for what the situation is. I would have to concur with what they’re saying. Both have had great years. I would think that one of the two pitchers from St. Louis here would win the award. Innings are important. Sometimes you put too much importance on wins, and you need to look at durability, too. Both are two excellent pitchers.”

2. With the weekend that was, it’s Monday and that seems like a good time to take another Gallup-like poll on where the Cy Young derby stands now:

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3. Depending how deep into the details you want to go for the Cy Young, you may find another ERA-based stat that sways you - somewhat. There are five pitchers in the National League with at 80 innings pitched at home this season and home-field ERAs of less than 2.00. Two of the Cy Young candidates, Lincecum and Wainwright, rank within those five. Granted, they pitch at hitter-friendly ballparks. That makes the two leaders in the niche stat all the more impressive. A hint: The Cardinals will have faced two of them in the past week by the end of this evening. Tops on the list is Houston lefty Wandy Rodriguez, who starts tonight against the Cardinals at Minute Maid Park:

1. Wandy Rodriguez, HOU … 97 ip … 1.58 ERA
2. Ted Lilly, CHC … 84 1/3 ip ….1.60 ERA
3. Tim Lincecum, SF … 110 1/3 ip … 1.79 ERA
4. Adam Wainwright, STL … 119 ip … 1.89 ERA
5. Clayton Kershaw, LAD … 83 1/3 ip … 1.97 ERA

4. Saturday’s 2-1 walk-off win for the Cardinals was the fifth time this season that the Cardinals have defeated the rival Cubs despite scoring three or fewer runs. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, that’s the most of any club against an opponent this season, and it’s the most for the Cardinals against the Cubs since 1973. Another fascinating tidbit from Elias this weekend: The Cardinals’ win Saturday, when Brendan Ryan tried to protect his ribs and kidneys from the Bald Bull-like uppercuts of his celebrating teammates, was the Cubs’ 13th loss this season by “walk-off”. That is the most for the Cubs since 1991 when 14 times their opponent won with a walk-off hit. To put the 13 in perspective for this season: The New York Yankees are shaving-cream pie happy with what’s being celebrated this year in the Bronx as the Season of Clutch for all their walk-off wins. They have 14.

5. Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin has blown three consecutive saves - and returns tonight to the site of his second blown save of the season - and yet, a strange happened this past weekend. He remained steady in his pursuit of the Rolaids Relief Man Award. The award, given annual to the best closer in each league, is a formula-based trophy, and while Franklin’s blown saves hurt, the wins help. Saves are worth three points, wins are worth two. Franklin’s consecutive wins Friday and Saturday softened the dent the blown save put in his total, and he now sits third in the ranks, essentially one save behind Los Angeles Dodgers’ close Jonathan Broxton and San Diego’s Heath Bell. The standings:

1. Jonathan Broxton, LAD … 35 saves … 109 pts
2. Heath Bell, SD … 37 saves … 108 pts
3. Ryan Franklin, STL … 37 saves … 105 pts
4. Francisco Cordero, CIN … 38 saves … 102 pts
5. Huston Street, COL … 33 saves … 101 pts

The award also offers points for what it describes as a “tough save”, giving an addition point to the closer if he enters the game with the tying run on base and closes out the victory. Franklin has four “tough saves”, which are the second most in the NL, behind only San Francisco’s Brian Wilson (6). Five relievers in the NL have three or more “tough saves”, with Bell, Arizona’s Chad Qualls and Washington’s Mike MacDougal just behind Franklin.

6. One of the best entertainment-only exercises out there this time of year is the playoff predictions that Baseball Prospectus and others run. (BP does its throughout the season.) What each essentially does is have a computer take all the available info from this season and play out the year 10,000, 100,000, even more times. The results are then tabulated to chart the number of times each team made the playoffs. That is compared against the total simulations to offer a percentage chance the team today, in the here and now, has of making the playoffs. According to the percents used over at ESPN.com and elsewhere we’re in for a dull couple weeks. Seven teams have playoff percentages better than 90 percent. Five teams - Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies and, yes, Cardinals - have chances of 99.8 percent or better. The Los Angeles Angels are close behind with a playoff percentage of 99.3. The closest duel in the NL is, of course, between Colorado (91 percent) and San Francisco (5 percent). Over the AL, the only real race is afoot - for the AL Central. In the simulations, Detroit scores a 77.6 chance, with Minnesota rallying and scoring the berth 21.3 percent of the time.

7. FARMNIK REPORT: Team USA toppled, 12-3, host Italy in ongoing pool play for the World Cup over in Torino, Italy. Texas prospect Justin Smoak hit two home runs in the victory to set a record USA Baseball World Cup record with eight so far in the tournament. He broke Tino Martinez’s record of six set in 1988. … Team USA is 6-0 in the second round of pool play. … Adam Ottavino, the Cardinals’ former first-round pick, could have been pitching for Italy in the tournament. His turn with the team in the World Baseball Classic made him eligible, but the Cardinals would not permit Ottavino to hop the pond for the tournament. Makes sense. Ottavino is preparing to pitch Tuesday as the Pacific Coast League champion Memphis Redbirds prepare for the one-game, winner-take-all unification bout in Oklahoma City against International League champ Durham. … One Cardinal prospect is over in Europe playing in the tournament: second baseman Daniel Descalso. The infielder did not play in the most recent win, but he’s batting .308/.471/.615 in four games for Team USA. Descals has a homer, a steal, three walks and two RBIs.

8. Over the weekend, Phillies slugger Ryan Howard, a St. Louis native, did what not even Albert Pujols has done to start his career. Howard, a potential NLCS opponent should both the Phillies and Cardinals get there, made 2009 his fourth consecutive season with at least 40 home runs and at least 120 RBIs. That stretches back to 2006, his first full season in the majors and the year he won the NL MVP. Howard is one of only four players to have four consecutive seasons of 40+/120+. The others:

Babe Ruth … 7 cons. … 1926-1932
Ken Griffey Jr. … 4 cons. … 1996-1999
Sammy Sosa … 4 cons. … 1998-2001

9. Kansas City Royals ace Zack Greinke is gaining momentum in his pursuit of the American League Cy Young award, and if he wins it will be unusual for the award. No starter with fewer than 16 wins has won the award, and Greinke finished the weekend with 14. But wins can be among the most misleading stats around if abused. (Fielding percentage is the most rotten of them all. Friends don’t let friends use fielding percentage to support arguments.) And Greinke’s 14 wins come for a team that entering the weekend had just 60. That tags him with 23.3 percent of the team’s wins, and that compares favorably to other Cy Young winners. In the past 10 years only six pitchers have had better POW - Percent Of team Wins (just made that up) - and two of them were last year’s Cy Young winners: Lincecum (25.0) and Cleveland’s Cliff Lee (27.2). Wainwright’s 18 wins give him a 20.7 POW, which puts him close to Carpenter’s 21.0 POW when the Cardinals won 100 games in 2005 and he won the Cy Young. The lowest POW since 1999? Randy Johnson’s 17.0 POW for Arizona in 1999.

10. In what The New York Times described this morning as a “tightly choreographed and eerily similar” sprint through the Sunday morning political talk shows, President Barack Obama delivered his pitch for health care and even talked a little baseball. Having made his Chicago White Sox fanaticism apparent (see: jacket), Obama told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Yankees and the Cardinals appear to be on a collision course for the World Series. He declined to make a prediction until the White Sox are eliminated — wonder if he had an off-the-record comment about Ozzie Guillen, dontcha? — but called Pujols “unbelievable” and referenced Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter as a “classic.” And you can tweet that.

Check out the video over NBC’s web page by following this link.

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Derrick Goold’s 10@10 on Bird Land appears every weekday there is a St. Louis Cardinals game. It races the clock each morning, appearing each day by 10:59 a.m. St. Louis time, but usually it’s up before a third cup of coffee at 10:30.

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