TOWER GROVE — St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan believe not all pitches are created equal. That is why La Russa often bats away questions about a pitcher being on a short-leash with a pitch count or a pitcher being allowed to blow by the mythical (and misleading) labrum-barrier of 100 pitches.

There are high-stress pitches. There are breezy innings. They do count the same.

Both are part of the internal calculations the Cardinals’ manager and his right-hand man use to determine when 100 pitches looks like 80 pitches and 80 pitches makes a pitcher look like he’s thrown 175 pitches. La Russa said he “just watches”. “Just watch,” he says, “and you know” when a pitcher is laboring. Pitch count doesn’t guide him as much as pitch stress does.

Such was the case last Saturday in Colorado, as Adam Wainwright threw a career-high 130 pitches and may just have won the Cy Young Award. What tipped the scales for La Russa was Wainwright’s seventh inning. He already had thrown more than 100 pitches by the end of the sixth inning. Yet, in the seventh Wainwright needed just seven pitches to get three groundouts. In the press box we were surprised that Wainwright batted for himself in the top of that inning, and yet it made sense: La Russa was handing the game, the evening, the clincher, and quite possibly the award to Wainwright. The righthander cinched it all with a 20-pitch eighth inning.

That was his 227th inning of the season. And that’s the count that starts today’s 10@10.

1. Wainwright is hardly alone in taking a significant innings bump this season. The Cardinals starters for Games 1, 2 and 3 of the coming NL Division Series will have all thrown at least 60 more innings this season than they did last season. The bump is biggest for ace Chris Carpenter. With his start in a few minutes here, he’ll edge into the 190s for the season — after being limited to 15 1/3 by injury last summer. Wainwright has set a career high (CH). Joel Pineiro could set a career high. And there are many more innings ahead. Here are the Cardinals five starters and how the innings they’ve shouldered this season compare to 2008 and their career highs:

Carpenter … 2009: 187 2/3 … 2008: 15 1/3 … CH: 241 2/3 (2005)

Wainwright … 2009: 227 … 2008: 132 … CH: 227+

Pineiro … 2009: 209 … 2008: 148 2/3 … CH: 211 2/3 (2003)

Lohse … 2009: 111 2/3 …. 2008: 200 … CH: 201 (2003)

Smoltz … 2009: 78 … 2008: 28 … CH: 256 (1997)

Baseball Rubbing Mud (Source: MLB.com)

2. Fascinating inside-baseball angle to last night’s game with the Cardinals’ implying the Cincinnati Reds have a little grime under their fingernails from a dollop of gamesmanship. As Rick Hummel wrote in this morning’s Post-Dispatch, Smoltz couldn’t get a good grip on the baseball — and the reason suggested was a lack of mud. According to the Cardinals, the Reds’ clubbies didn’t rub-up the baseballs with enough (any) mud.  That made the balls slick to Smoltz’s fingers and, in the post-game comments, contributed to his control issues. Pitching coach Dave Duncan suggested to Mr. Hummel that opposing pitcher Bronson Arroyo didn’t have the same issue because he pulled a Kenny Rogers and had pine tar on his hat. Cute. It’s the mound in Colorado. It’s the mud in Cincinnati. What’s it going to be next week in Los Angeles? (Bet: The shower water.) A quick primer on the benefit of Delaware River mud used by baseball to prepare its baseballs: Former ballplayer Lena Blackburne is said to have first used the mud from the Delaware to rub-up the baseball when the common practice of tobacco-spit and mud from the field was found to stain the ball or muck-up the leather. Mud from the Delaware softened the baseball’s sheen without darkening the leather. Tubs of Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud are still used today.

3. That leads us to today’s playoffs-approaching question:

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4. With his start today, Cardinals’ ace Carpenter has the chance to complete a clean sweep of the National League Central. In 14 starts this season against division foes, Carpenter has yet to lose:

vs. Cubs … 3 starts … 2-0, 1.42 ERA

vs. Reds … 3 starts … 3-0, 1.56 ERA

vs. Astros … 3 starts … 1-0, 1.96 ERA

vs. Brewers … 3 starts … 2-0, 1.17 ERA

vs. Pirates … 2 starts … 2-0, 2.12 ERA

vs. NLC … 14 starts … 10-0, 1.66 ERA

5. Albert Pujols enters this morning’s game with a league-leading 91 extra-base hits. It’s a remarkable total, but it ain’t close to the league record and he’d have to pick up the pop to even approach his own personal best. In 2004, Pujols had 99 extra-base hits, and he became the first Cardinal player in six decades to have that many. The MLB record for extra-base hits in a season since 1901 is Babe Ruth’s 119 in 1921, and the NL record is Barry Bonds’ 107 in 2001. In fact, four of the top five totals in NL history have come since 2000: Bonds’, Todd Helton’s 105 and 103 and Sammy Sosa’s 103. After that … well, it’s mostly Cardinals.

6. Six of the top 16 extra-base totals in NL history are Cardinals, and nine of the top 27. Pujols’ 91 ties Mark McGwire’s total in 1998 for the ninth-highest total in club history. The eight that are better:

Stan Musial … 103 XB … 1948 (the rained-out Triple Crown)

Rogers Hornsby … 102 XB … 1922 (Triple Crown)

Albert Pujols … 99 XB … 2004

Joe Medwick … 97 XB … 1937 (Triple Crown)

Albert Pujols … 95 XB … 2003

Joe Medwick … 95 XB … 1936

Jim Bottomley … 93 XB … 1928

Stan Musial … 92 XB … 1953

7. The Cardinals’ Hall of Fame — which is closed while it undergoes a relocation to a future site in the Ballpark Village (ETA, TBA) — announced last week a few new acquisitions for its 15,000-piece vault. The highlight: The 1968 Cy Young Award won by Bob Gibson. Also acquired by the in-house Hall was the personal Hall of Fame plaque from Cooperstown given to Gibson, a game-used glove from Gibson and the 1931 World Series championship ring from Earl “Sparky” Adams. The Cy Young Award is from the season that changed baseball and featured Gibson’s record 1.12 ERA and his MVP turn. Adams was one of the lineup of regulars who hit .300 or better for the Cardinals in 1930, and he led the league in doubles in 1931. Here is a photo of the new artifacts, from the Cardinals:

Hall Haul: Gibson's glove, award and plaque; Adam's World Series ring.

8. Baseball Prospectus recently ran the numbers on the pitching staffs that are headed to the postseason, and the conclusion from the thinkers (a/k/a “spreadsheet guys”): The Cardinals are the best. (Subscription may be required, sorry.) Writes Christina Kahrl: “The Cardinals are the obvious class of the league, but the Phillies deserve to rank right with them when you consider that they’ll get to start a series with Cliff Lee and could elect to start (J.A. Happ) instead of (Pedro Martinez) or Joe Blanton.” To arrive at this conclusion, BP uses some esoteric numbers that essentially drop the pitchers on an island and calculate how often they would win independent of run support. They call it Support-Neutral Winning Percentage (SNWP). The Cardinals, as a staff, have a .535 SNWP, edging the LA Dodgers .534 and Colorado’s .515. The article breaks down the number to the four probable postseason starters, and the Cardinals’ climb to .575, and No. 2 is Detroit .562. The trouble with the article is this: Pitching is not support neutral. Ask Carpenter. Ask Smoltz (pre-Wednesday). Cardinals may have the best playoff-bound pitching staff regardless of the support, which is swell. But support matters.

9. Hit the links: Wasn’t it just a couple years ago, after Prince Fielder’s 50-HR binge, that we discussed in here how the Milwaukee Brewers should move him to Kansas City for rising-but-struggling pitcher Zack Greinke? (KMOX’s Kevin Wheeler and I had a good couple rounds on that one.) Now the Brewers are weighing the possibility of Fielder’s trade value being at its “peak” again, per this story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. … Accompanying Matthew Leach’s story on Tony La Russa’s wealth of playoff experience is an interesting exchange between Bob Costas and the Cardinals’ manager on “over-managing.” … Atlanta Journal Constitution’s David O’Brien (pres.), writes about how the Atlanta Braves turned a must-win game into a “must-whiff” evening and likely bowed out of the Wild Card race. … Another managerial job is open, as Cleveland fires manager Eric Wedge. Cleveland Plain Dealer baseball writer Paul Hoynes runs down what happened and what traits the next manager needs. … And, posted just a few minutes ago, FOXSports.com’s national baseball writer and sideline reporter Ken Rosenthal gives the Cardinals a clean sweep of the top player awards, handing the MVP to Pujols and the Cy Young to …. click, already.

10. A Wisconsin man is about to complete the road trip of a lifetime this weekend, visiting Citi Field to see the New York Mets host the Houston Astros. That game means John Salvo, in an expedient span of 55 years, will have seen every possible combination of teams within their leagues play both home and away. (That means he’s seen the Mets at Houston, Cardinals at Padres, Padres at Cardinals, Yankees at Rays, Rays at Yankees … and so on.) The article says he’s seen a homer by Roger Maris and by McGwire. He’s  been to a combined total of 57 ballparks, both active, abandoned and demolished.

A college buddy and I mapped out a way that we could get to all 30 ballparks in, I think, 34 days after our graduation from Mizzou. We thought about going, sleeping in the car, writing about it … but a funny thing happened on the way to our trip: We got job offers.

How many ballpark stamps do you have on your passport?

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