TOWER GROVE — While the St. Louis Cardinals have plenty to busy themselves with in the final five games of the regular season — see today’s game story for, oh, a few things to be spruced-up — and no reason to look beyond October, there are traces of 2010 in many of the comments coming from the club.

The front office and chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. have talked about the importance of re-signing outfielder Matt Holliday, sure, but they have also discussed the notion of “keeping this core together.”

The noun “core” is something manager Tony La Russa uses to describe the bedrock players of his lineup: The Yadier Molinas, the Albert Pujols and, back in, say, 2004, the Scott Rolens and Jim Edmonds. There have been a few new pledges to the “core” this season — even since the end the spring training. La Russa has described Mark DeRosa as part of the team’s “core”, and it would be difficult to argue that leadoff hitter/second baseman Skip Schumaker hasn’t merited a promotion to that group. The two pillars of the Cardinals pitching staff — Chris Carpenter (2012 option) and Adam Wainwright (2013 option) — are signed for several more years, and Kyle Lohse is about the finish the first year of his four-year deal.

The opportunity, as mentioned in the past week by a team official, is there for the Cardinals to secure a lineup that has won the division this year — and could contend for the next several years.

I’ve been fiddling around with a way to give you, the plugged-in readers, a way to create an interactive lineup for 2010. Some attempts ended up too cluttered to work. The poll function available on the blogs seemed like the perfect tool, but using it position by position didn’t illustrate the lineup as a unit. Sure it answered the question on whether Brendan Ryan has done enough to be inked-in as the shortstop for 2010 (has he?); it just didn’t offer a look at the lineup as a whole. The best way seems to be the (simplified) way presented today — one poll.

Another, more pressing, assignment today limits the time I can devote to the 10@10, though it will return in full Thursday — for the final two 10@10s of the season. (Is there demand for postseason editions?) With that in mind and one eye cocked toward the future, today’s 10@10 begins with the Interactive Lineup poll.

1.-8. It’s simple: Below are the Cardinals everyday starters at seven of the EIGHT positions and the two players who have been split-shifting (sort of) at center field. Rick Ankiel is listed as OF, because he could return as a starter, really, at any of the three spots, depending on the makeup of the roster. Vote for each of the players you think will return as a starter. Just click by their name. You can vote for as few as ONE (though two are riveted into their spots, right?) and as many as EIGHT. The end result should paint a picture of the lineup you think the Cardinals will take into 2010 — and the holes that will have to be filled from within the organization and via free agency.

 Loading …

9. Posed a question the other day about the painting Opie Otterstad did of the 2006 World Series champion Cardinals and their celebration. (You can see the painting — not actual size — in Friday’s edition of the 10@10.) The question: What Cardinal, according to Otterstad, is painted twice into the celebration scrum. One of the comments on previous blog entries got it right: flat-brimmed Anthony Reyes is depicted twice — once on each side of the celebration.

10. Hit the Links: It’s not baseball- or Cardinals-related, but the P-D’s Swiss Army Knife, Tom Timmermann, has a great story this morning about MU selling cell phones that still had messages on them — and how those cell phones are now memorabilia. … Hall of Fame reporter Hal McCoy, the longest-tenured baseball writer in the biz, is retiring from The Dayton Daily News at the end of the season, but not before he covers this season, and writes game stories like this. … Senior Patrol Leader Joe Strauss writes that La Russa and Jim Edmonds reconciled recently. … Clint Barmes admits that he doesn’t know if he caught the ball Sunday, telling Troy Renck and The Denver Post: “I’m not saying I would cheat. But it wasn’t my call.” … And, finally, from Chicago, The Sun-Times called manager Lou Piniella “tired, cranky and disengaged” one day, and the next day, Piniella, according to The Chicago Tribune’s ball-writing Mizzou alum Paul Sullivan, disputes the theory he’s disengaged.

***

Oct. 1 may be tomorrow, but one week from today October really starts …

-30-