TOWER GROVE — St. Louis Cardinals starter John Smoltz returns to the rotation tonight a few days earlier than expected and into a situation that isn’t entirely surprising, he explained the other day. A veteran of these September marches to the postseason, Smoltz admitted he would “stoked” to pitch in the game that cinched a postseason berth.

But slumps happen, he said. And instead of being a clincher tonight, the Cardinals need him to be a stopper.

The Cardinals have lost five of their previous six games, are assured of a losing home stand, and now welcome the pursuing Chicago Cubs with a division lead that hardly looks as hearty as the 11 1/2 cushion of a week or so ago. Still, the lead is nine games. Still, the Chicago Cubs would have to go 15-2 from here while the Cardinals go 5-10 to just tie. Still …

It’s why Smoltz referenced what he called his Golden Rule: Treat today’s game the same.

“That’s why, at this point, you’ve really got to look at it as just another game,” Smoltz said. “It’s my Golden Rule. The perception of how things are going for the team right now can cause you to hold your breath and go, ‘Uh-oh.’ It’s baseball. … I understand the cause and effect, where (there’s losing) and people think it’s shaking and ‘Oh, my gosh.’ … You go through streaks. Teams are fighting for their playoff lives. If you set the scenario again, asking ‘Would you like to be in this position leaving spring training?’ I’m sure everybody on the team would say, ‘Absolutely.’”

Smoltz’s break and the Cardinals looking to break a losing skid is where today’s 10@10 begins …

1. Smoltz has not pitched since Sept. 8 against Milwaukee. In his career, he’s made 50 starts on six or more days of rest, and he’s 21-17 with a 3.03 ERA in those starts. As October approaches, the idea of pitching on uneven rest could become a possibility, keep in mind that Smoltz is 7-8, 4.89 ERA on three days of rest and 39-36 with a 3.99 ERA on five days of rest. Of course, those numbers are mostly from his decade-plus as an elite pitcher and not one coming back from shoulder surgery … Here are the numbers on uneven rest for the Cardinals’ top three starters:

Carpenter … 3 days: Never. 5 days: 36-24, 4.03, 79 starts

Wainwright … 3 days: Never. 5 days: 14-9, 3.13, 25 starts

Pineiro … 3 days: 0-2, 10.54, 3 starts. 5 days: 30-25, 4.13, 71 starts

2. Even as he took some days off to rest his sore shoulder, the vibe around the Cardinals was that Smoltz was solidifying his place as the club’s No. 4 starter entering the playoffs. That has a lot to do with Kyle Lohse’s ongoing struggle with his forearm injury, but it is also clear that Smoltz wanted the opportunity to prove he could start, regardless of the Cardinals initial bullpen blueprint for his signing. What should happen? Well, that’s today’s poll:

 Loading …

3. Albert Pujols is 0-for-6 against Ted Lilly’s breaking ball since the lefty joined the Cubs before the 2007 season. That information thanks to Inside Edge. Tonight’s starter for the Cubs, Lilly, has won 44 games in his three seasons with the Cubs — the most of any pitcher in his first three seasons with the Cubs since the advent of divisional play. Lilly’s 44 wins also lead the National League for the past three seasons, putting him ahead of Adam Wainwright (43), Jamie Moyer (42), Chad Billingsley (40), Derek Lowe (40), Brandon Webb (40) and Carlos Zambrano (40). Of those seven who have won at least 40 games in the NL since 2007, only one — Webb — has also won a Cy Young Award.

4. John Dewan’s stat of the week this week focuses on the Rookie of the Year races. While it’s widely believed that Cardinals rookie center fielder Colby Rasmus has faded from contention, what with Chris Coghlan, Tommy Hanson, J. A. Happ, Andrew McCutchen, Garrett Jones and so on having lapped him in the second half. Not so, argues Dewan. Dewan, an author with ACTA Sports, uses Runs Created to first sift through the rookies. There at the top of the list is Coghlan, whose 74 RC are at least 12 more than every other rookie. Rasmus doesn’t crack the top six with his 56 RC. Dewan splits the list into leagues and then grades the Runs Created through a filter of defensive demands as well. (Pitchers are rated on their equivalent of Runs Created, i.e., *Runs kept from being Created.) This isolates the value of the position the rookie plays defensive, rating, say, shortstops ahead of third baseman and center fielders ahead of left fielders. Here is what Dewan presents then as the list of NL Rookie of the Year candidates:

Rasmus, STL … 56 RC … 7 runs saved, 18 pos. adjust … 83 ttl

Happ, PHI … 81 RC* … 1 run save, 0 pos. adjust … 82 ttl

Smith, COL … 62 RC … 6 runs saved, 7 pos. adjust … 77 ttl

Coghlan, FLA … 74 RC … -13 runs saved, 12 pos. adjust … 73 ttl

McCutchen, PIT … 59 RC … -6 runs saved, 16 pos. adjust … 70 ttl

5. Pity the baseball writers. Earlier this week, the geniuses — ahem, I mean, mean-spirited, jerky bullies — behind Fire Joe Morgan pulled a Favre and came out of voluntary retirement. And as with Favre, no sportswriter was spared. Fire Joe Morgan (subhed: Where Bad Sports Journalism Came to Die) was a site by some comedy writers who took it upon themselves to ridicule all of the stupid stuff that spills off our keyboards. They took romantic, nostalgic, over-wrought baseball coverage and obliterated it with writing so sharp it’s sold on the Home Shopping Network. (I felt their sting. Once. Wrote a bad lede about David Eckstein. Made my J-Profs cringe. Heck, made me cringe. Eventually. Won’t happen again. Thank goodness that certain Cubs-related poem I wrote a few years ago escaped their scalpel.)

Well, the FJM crew fired up their biting VORP (Value Over Replacement Pundit, of course) and guest-edited Deadspin. (Both sites work blue, so no links because this is a friendly neighborhood blog. Google away.) But, one of the FJM’s articles, excoriating and filleting an article about Derek Jeter as the AL MVP had this priceless (and PG!) paragraph about Albert Pujols:

Here are Pujols’s stats: 1.000/1.000/4.000/5.000. That’s right. He is batting a thousand, with a thousand OBP (naturally), and every hit has been a home run, and thus his OPS is a perfect 5.000. (Why aren’t people talking about this more? It has to be some kind of record.) He is the best baseball player in the world. Sometimes he hits without a bat just to give the other team a chance. La Russa gave him a day off last week, and he spent it with his family watching “G-Force,” and he still went 3-3. Congress just enacted a law making it illegal to watch him play without the aid of a radiation blast shield.

6. One of the under-the-radar stars of the Cardinals’ Triple-A team’s run through the playoffs is its new closer, Pete Parise. The righthander has four saves in Memphis’ five wins this postseason. Not too shabby for someone who had eight saves total this past season. Thrust into the closer role when the Redbirds scrambled to replace Jess Todd, et. al., Parise first hit the headlines when he was mistakenly confused for Mike Parisi in a box score. Parise closed out Memphis’ Game 2 victory — more about that below — with a fastball that averaged 92 mph and touched 94 mph (for a strike). The Cardinals fished Parise, a New York native and Pitt alum, out of the Frontier League as a free-agent find. A year ago, he was in Low-A. This year, throwing strikes and flashing late movement, he went 5-2, 3.49 ERA overall in 2009. At Class AAA, he had 31 strikeouts and 13 walks in 36 2/3 innings.

7. FARMNIK REPORT: The PCL championship series shifts to Sacramento for the weekend. The Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate, the Memphis Redbirds, lead the best-of-five series 2-0 as they head west. … The Cardinals had been hoping to get first-round pick Adam Ottavino to start an important, postseason game this fall — the last time he pitched in a pressure game, Ottavino shined for Team Italy against Team Venezuela in the WBC — and the righty responded. Ottavino struck out nine in his Game 2 start, a season-high for the righty. … Most of Jaime Garcia’s strikeouts the night before in Game 1 came on his slider. … Mark Hamilton homered in Game 2 to help the Redbirds to a 3-2 victory. The Redbirds, so offensively meek for most of the season, have homered in every postseason game. … In this morning’s Commercial Appeal, Marlon W. Morgan has a preview of tonight’s game with some thoughts from Brett Wallace about the reason the Redbirds are 5-0 in the playoffs so far: Pitching.

8. Hit the links. … Mentioned before that Hall of Fame writer Hal McCoy, the Cincinnati Reds beat writer at The Dayton Daily News, is retiring after 37 seasons on the beat and after his paper decided to stop covering the team. The Reds had Hal McCoy Night the other day, and the writer received an interesting souvenir from the evening. Some are seeing McCoy’s retirement as another sign that the lifelong baseball beat writer is an endangered species. Let’s hope not. … The best switch hitter of our era, Chipper Jones, told reporters in Atlanta that if his slump continues and he cannot elevate his batting average back to the .310-.330 that he is used to hitting, then he’ll retired in 2010. … Randy Miller, over at PhillyBurbs.com, writes about how Cole Hamels is hitting his postseason pace — against the Washington Nationals, to be sure — but down in the same story is Brad Lidge allowing a run and nailing down his 30th save in 40 chances for the Phillies. … Across the state, Sam Mellinger writes in The Kansas City Star that the Royals have finally signed draft pick Aaron Crow. Crow is the former Mizzou ace who did not sign after being drafted in 2008 and instead escaped to independent ball while he awaited a re-entry into the draft. Crow reportedly signs a three-year major-league deal with the Royals. The deal could be worth $5 million to Crow, including a $1.5-million signing bonus and all of the incentives based on when he arrives in the majors. Mellinger digs deeper into the deal in his blog, Ball Star. … In his blog, Houston Chronicle columnist Richard Justice asks a vital question for the Houston Astros and the NL Central: “Can Berkman and Oswalt still be elite players?” Lance Berkman will still be around when the Cardinals visit next week, but ace Roy Oswalt has been shutdown, his season over with back trouble.

9. After losing just three times in a stretch of 31 starts by their big three — Chris Carpenter, Joel Pineiro and Adam Wainwright — the Cardinals have now lost each of their starts in a week. That’s the first time since the last week of June that that has happened. Moreover, it means the only game the Cardinals won in the past six was started by …. by … I’ll give you a moment to think about it for a second … by … (cue Jeopardy theme) … by … yes … Todd Wellemeyer.

10. Found a gem yesterday while hunting with the boy wonder through the shelves of a local used book shop, Dunaway Books: Bob Broeg’s Redbirds: A Century of Cardinals’ Baseball (St. Louis Post-Dispatch complimentary copy). The book, a 100-year “informal” history, according to Mr. Broeg’s introduction, is a delight, right down to Jack Buck’s description of the Cardinals as “fierce falcons” ready to “(challenge) anybody who dares to knock off a feather.” Just consider the first paragraph of Broeg’s history:

No, it’s just simply not true that Lewis and Clark formed St. Louis’s first baseball battery before Thomas Jefferson’s doughty duo traveled up the Missouri River to determine whether the President had made the biggest steal at least until Lou Brock. … If Meriwether Lewis and Williams Clark warmed up with a little levee-side pitch-and-catch at St. Louis or St. Charles before striking out for the vast unknown, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Now that’s baseball writing.

-30-