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 questions for this twist on the usual PostCards he’s been in St. Louis, Texas, Venezuela, Florida and, yes, possibly New Jersey.

Might be a few more stops in there, but I haven’t had access to his passport.

He isn’t will to spill the “secrets” asked for below, but Luhnow does explore the issue of control as an indicator for pitching prospects and the competitive hard-wiring of pitchers from different regions of the country. Here’s PostCards with Luhnow, Part 2 of a planned trilogy (back Thurs. with the conclusion):

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Q: What are the needs for the Cardinals going into the draft? I’m sure pitching is always a must, but anything else that the organization is thin on right now?

– Chris.

Luhnow: You are correct; pitching is a need every year. We would specifically like to draft and sign a few left handed pitchers to add to our system. Other than that, we will lean towards players at premium positions because they tend to be athletic enough to play anywhere. We want guys who can hit and pitchers who throw strikes.

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Q: Jeff, how much do you guys look into walks when looking at a college pitcher? It seems like the Cardinals have taken a lot of guys in recent years that have had significant control problems in college, and none of them have really been able to improve that once they turned pro. I think the guy I am mostly referring to with this question is Shooter Hunt. Obviously he has great stuff, but if he isn’t able to figure out the strike zone he won’t amount to much. How much does a guy’s lack of control knock him down on your board?

– fewgoodcards (one of the writers at Future Redbirds)

Luhnow: That is an excellent question and one that we are discussing every day in our draft preparation meetings. I won’t comment on Shooter Hunt except to say that he has two plus pitches at least and has been successful in college and in the summer. He will be talked about in all 30 draft rooms.

One thing that you are suggesting is that if a player has control problems in high school or college they will most likely have control problems in pro ball. I tend to agree with that statement, as do most experienced scouts. Having said that, the difference between the metal bat and the wood bat does change how some pitchers approach the opposition. Pitching to contact can be a dangerous strategy against bats with a much larger sweet spot, but can work in pro ball.

A lack of control will knock players down on our board. How much depends on a variety of other factors.

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Q: Jeff, This question has a negative overtone, but is not meant to be taken negatively: Did the organization learn anything from passing on Rick Porcello last year? Can you explain? Thanks and good luck in the draft.

– Chris Grimm

Luhnow: No worries, Chris, this is not the first time I’ve been asked this question nor will it be the last time. We made the decision that we felt was in the best interest of our organization at the time. Every year, I reflect on the prior drafts and think about what we could have done to improve. I also ask each of our scouts to do that regularly. We make adjustments, just like good hitters do in baseball.

To a certain extent, we are playing the odds with the draft. We are going to be right some of the time and wrong some of the time. For us, the odds are based on an extensive analysis of past history coupled with a thorough evaluation of each player. The question about Porcello was never about his current talent or future potential, it was about the cost of signing him relative to the probability of him fulfilling his potential. I will say that nothing we have studied or learned in the past year has made us realize that our analysis or thought process was misleading.

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Q: I have read all about your busy traveling schedule which involves seeing players at workouts and meeting your scouts in different states. Do you find that pitchers from the South are more aggressive than pitchers from the North? There was a study reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology which focused on MLB players, specifically narrowing it down to the pitchers, to help psychologist have a better understanding of aggression theories. Do you find this could be true?

– Mike H.

Luhnow: I have not heard that theory before and really have no idea if it is true or not. I would be skeptical but wouldn’t rule anything out, especially if the experts have studied it. Many scouts believe that pitchers from cold weather regions are less developed and therefore could have more upside relative to their warm region counterparts. That makes some sense, but is an unproven theory. Mike, if you’ve ever walked the streets of Manhattan at lunchtime, you would not have seen a lot of “laid back” people. Somehow I doubt New Yorkers or pitchers from Boston are less aggressive than pitchers from Houston or Los Angeles. I haven’t seen any evidence of this dynamic.

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Q: Thanks for taking my question. There have been rumors floating around recently from people close to Colby Rasmus that claim that his recent struggles stem from coaches at Memphis telling him to change his swing, so much so, that he’s severely mixed up. Is this true? If so, I honestly can’t believe some of the best baseball minds in the industry would feel the need to change one of the best prospects in baseball. As someone who follows player development with this organization very intently I can’t express how disappointed I am by this (if it is indeed true). Those same people are also claiming that Colby is now unhappy with the organization. First Anthony Reyes, now Colby Rasmus, why would the organization feel the need to change a prospect’s approach after they’ve had so much success? Thank you for your reply. Respectfully.

– Matt “Lassie” L.

Luhnow: Lassie, we work with all of our players to make them better. I’m glad you follow our player development and it’s too bad you are disappointed. Colby is a very good player and I suspect he will come out of his current troubles sooner rather than later. I’m not going to talk about any details of what we teach and why with respect to any player, but I will defend our coaches who know what they are doing. They know what a player needs to do to succeed in the big leagues, and that is what we teach.

DG NOTE: Colleague Joe Strauss explored Rasmus’ slow start to his first season in Triple-A this past weekend, and he did offer insight to the “rumors floating around”, including their source and the explanation.

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Q: First and foremost, thank you Mr. Luhnow for taking this time off from your busy schedule and commit to this weekly assignment of answering questions from your fans (as if you don’t have enough to do already before the draft!) You are known to use the “Moneyball” philosophy in selecting baseball talent. Realizing this, are there any other “unorthodox” approach your department is attempting to use when scouting for, lets say, a pitcher? Being that there are several aspects when evaluating a pitcher; from his mechanics to the velocity and control, to their mental adjustments. What are the other “secrets”you use to determine who actually has the potential to match your expectations, or for that matter, possibly scout a player that surpasses your wildest dream?

– Jason Hamilton

Luhnow: Jason, I could tell you all our secrets but then I would have to hire you so you wouldn’t share them with anybody else. Actually, we do try to gain every edge we can and some of the stuff that we do is unique, but at the end of the day it comes down to trusting the expert judgment of our scouts. If we properly hire, develop and deploy our scouts we will have an advantage over those clubs that don’t do this as well.

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Every week during the regular season, The Post-Dispatch’s baseball writer Derrick Goold will answer fans’ emails in a mailbag blog called PostCards, a spin-off of Bird Land. Cardinals vice president Jeff Luhnow agreed to answer a batch of questions submitted last week, and his answers have been reproduced here in three different entries on the blog.

To comment and discuss the mailbag visit the PostCards blog on StlToday.com. To submit questions write PostCards@post-dispatch.com or file them as a comment on this blog. With all questions please include your name and hometown.

PostCards will run online exclusively at StlToday.com.

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