TOWER GROVE — The first edition of this offseason’s PostCards mailbag begins with a favorite parlor game of the press box: Take the best player on the team. Put him on the trading block. Wonder just what it would take in return to make a deal happen. Stir and … Presto! Instant debate.

In the St. Louis Cardinals’ case, that’s Albert Pujols, the best hitter in the game, and a fine place to start when we peer…

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — During his daily morning briefing with the media today, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon said he was reading a copy of Branch Rickey’s book last year and realized that before Rickey, Rogers Hornsby and Sam Breadon came along the Cardinals weren’t much. And, yet, Maddon went on to say the Cardinals now standout as one of the most successful franchises of the past century.

“It’s very complimentary” that people now talk…

JUPITER, Fla. — This morning, the St. Louis Cardinals minor-league staff is bunkered in here at Roger Dean Stadium for the final hours of their pre-camp meetings. This afternoon, about the time the meetings end, pitchers will start reporting and within the next couple days the backlots will bloom with minor leaguers. Even as minor-league camp opens for 2009, there are certainly plenty of questions about who is headed where and what is expected when…

TOWER GROVE — The list of players offered arbitration is in, with 24 free agents getting the notice from their former teams and not one St. Louis Cardinal. While the deadline revealed more about who won’t be a Cardinal in 2009 than who will be, the list of players not offered arbitration will expand the Cardinals’ shopping list.

Houston opted not to give Randy Wolf an arbitration offer and the Astros, with Mike Hampton on the way,…

TOWER GROVE — In this crowded field of mailbags and Q&As and message boards and chats and blogs there are only so many questions about Skip Schumaker playing second base to fuel so many different give-and-take platforms. Good thing PostCards has Frank Fuhrig.

The mailbag was loaded with questions answered better elsewhere or answered often before, but on election day into the hopper Fuhrig fired this gem: Who manages the St. Louis Cardinals in 2010?

The poll…

TOWER GROVE — Gentlemen, start your transactions.

General managers from around baseball are converging at AIG’s favorite hangout in Dana Point, Calif., today and all week for the first round of window-shopping and swap-talking. Unlike last year when the pitching market was headlined by Carlos Silva and trades were the currency of winter, this offseason has the high-watt free agents (CC Sabathia and Manny Ramirez) and the superstar trade chips (Jake Peavy and Matt Holliday). There…

SOUTH GRAND — Would have had the weekly PostCards posted much earlier this morning if the first question — from the sharp, witty and ever-adept keyboard of regular Frank Fuhrig, of course — had not been as much a homework assignment as a question.

It’s written less for a mailbag and more for a syllabus.

One element of the St. Louis Cardinals’ interest/chances in landing San Diego ace Jake Peavy is the amount of money the Cardinals…

SOUTH GRAND — So much of what the Cardinals consider doing and end up doing this offseason to improve their roster will be watched and judged through the Chris Carpenter prism.

When Carpenter is healthy, so are the Cardinals’ chances.

When he is not … Well, that is the question presented to the Cardinals this season as they choose whether they will build a team on the hope that Carpenter won’t be limited by the nettlesome nerves…

TOWER GROVE - The bountiful stats Ryan Ludwick put up this season, the career-high wins for pitchers like Kyle Lohse and even the radar readouts from rookie Jason Motte – as big as those numbers were, the digits that continue to define the Cardinals 2008 season are these: 31.

Everyone knows what that number is.

The first question of the Return of PostCards forces us to discuss what that number means. The Cardinals blew 31 saves this…

TOWER GROVE — The C.C. Sabathia era in Milwaukee was barely a few innings old this evening and the ink wasn’t yet dry on the news reports of the Cubs acquiring Rich Harden when one of the Brewers’ broadcasters said something to this effect:

“Your move Cardinals.”

The jockeying for supremacy in the National League Central bounded out of the standings and into the front offices the past two days, as the Cardinals chief rivals added potential…

TOWER GROVE – Naturally, Albert Pujols comes off the disabled list this afternoon to have (ho hum) another four-hit (yawn) day and (no big whoop) drive in the go-ahead run seconds ago here in the ninth inning.

So if you had Pujols in the pool about which would return first — the MVP or the P-D mailbag — you win. But only by five plate appearances.

After a sabbatical of sorts to get the inbin good and loaded…

TOWER GROVE — The last bundle of mail exchanged between readers and the Cardinals vice president of player procurement and farm director Jeff Luhnow featured some of the finer-tuned questions in this couple weeks of PostCards.

Of specific interest to readers is the idea of cost-benefit analysis when it comes the draft. There were many questions about it over the past two weeks and I tried to capture the repetition by selecting a few representatives. Below…

TOWER GROVE — In the second posting of three mailbags with the Cardinals’ vice president and draft director Jeff Luhnow, he fields a variety of questions from readers, ranging from the Rick Porcello lessons to the Anthony Reyes-Colby Rasmus comparisons and concerns.

For a feel of the kind of schedule Luhnow is keeping in the weeks leading up to the draft — June 5 and 6 — consider that from the time we started harvesting reader…

SOUTH GRAND — The second (big) batch of questions posed to Cardinals vice president and draft director Jeff Luhnow will be up shortly. Got to give the guy time as he flew from Texas to Venezuela to Jersey to Florida to … well, wherever his passport and scouting reports will take him, apparently.

In the meantime, you’re stuck with this, no exclamation points earned or needed.

Solid wave of mail hit the PostCards address in the past…

TOWER GROVE – With the draft approaching, Cardinals vice president of player procurement and farm director Jeff Luhnow is a traveling man.

Constantly traveling.

There’s less than three weeks before the draft and soon the Cardinals will be holding scouting workouts at various sites around the country — and scout meetings at each place. While the Cardinals held a mock draft this past winter to help get more familiar with the amateur players available this June, and take…