TOWER GROVE — On the St. Louis Cardinals’ dime, Adam Kennedy went on to have a fine season with Oakland, filling in at third base for the Athletics and contributing with a .289 average, 63 RBIs and 65 runs scored. It was the kind of the production the Cardinals signed him for and never saw.

All the Cardinals got in return was … better.

When the Cardinals elected, at manager Tony La Russa’s urging, to release Kennedy, they…

TOWER GROVE — Having already added an All-Star elite bat, a grinder third baseman and a second-chance middle infielder to his executive-of-the-year bid, St. Louis Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak is poised this afternoon to add a future Hall of Famer to the club’s pitching staff. Righthander John Smoltz is expected to finalize a deal with the Cardinals if he clears waivers by noon today, Post-Dispatch baseball scribe Joe Strauss was the first to report last…

TOWER GROVE — Ignore the throwing error. Errors are going to happen. And Adam Wainwright pitched around it anyway as the Cardinals shut out the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday night. Ignore the throwing error and Brendan Ryan is putting on a defensive clinic at shortstop this week.

On one sharply hit groundball Tuesday night, Ryan sprinted to his left, snared the ball on the run past second base, went at least a stride — maybe…

TOWER GROVE — The premeditated celebration began the moment Bill Hall’s 10th-inning single landed Monday and winning run Casey McGehee crossed home plate. Immediately the Milwaukee Brewers bolted for their clubhouse, turning, as Tom Haudricourt wrote at the Journal-Sentinel, a walk-off into a run-off and again stoking the discussion about those brash and bold Brewers and their post-win ways.

Untucking. Posing. Behind closed doors. Or otherwise.

A rivalry that has its roots in Milwaukee’s public compliments and…

JUPITER, Fla. — The St. Louis Cardinals all-time leader in saves has yet to throw a pitch in a game for his new club, the Tampa Bay Rays, but manager Joe Maddon said Jason Isringhausen already feels like a fit for his bullpen.

“I’ve known him for about two weeks now, and you feel like you’ve know this guy for 10 years,” the Rays manager said this morning at Roger Dean Stadium before the Rays played…

TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals sudden and curious move to release Adam Kennedy on the eve of spring training leaves them with a hole at second base and an open casting call for the job.

So, it’s business at usual down in Jupiter.

With all due respect to the St. Louis Blues, whose revolving door in goal was chronicled and counted in this morning’s paper by Dan O’Neill (ah, where have you gone Tom Barrasso?), the real…

DOWNTOWN — Infielder Adam Kennedy guesstimated that a healthy Chris Carpenter is worth an additional 15 or 20 wins in a season, and while that is certainly a generous theory it is laced with truth: A healthy ace Carpenter has always meant one thing for the Cardinals.

October.

As detailed in this morning’s paper by colleague Joe Strauss (”Carpenter gives upbeat report”), Carpenter and the St. Louis Cardinals are optimistic about how he’s recovering from his nerve issue….

DOWNTOWN — The interviews and comments have come fast and semi-furious here on the first day of the St. Louis Cardinals 13th annual Winter Warm-up. Been trying to keep the Twitter feed (dgoold) updated and will be back here with more news in the blog shortly. But for the moment, here’s a copy/paste of some of the things, ahem, “tweeted” from this morning’s pressers with Chris Carpenter, Chris Duncan, Adam Kennedy (a few seconds ago) and several…

DOWNTOWN — A year ago, St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa popped into the media room at the Winter Warm-up and leveled what essentially was a verbal reprimand and a challenge to Adam Kennedy. Irked that Kennedy didn’t show up for the fanfest La Russa said the second baseman was dealing with very little slack entering the season.

He said missing the Warm-up was his first and “hopefully only” misstep.

“He’s made a mistake by not being…

DOWNTOWN — What started as St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa’s standard stumping for Chris Duncan as an “impact” member of the still-crowded 2009 outfielder suddenly became a second nomination in as many months for rookie Colby Rasmus as a key figure in the coming season.

On Monday, La Russa was in town to promote his annual ARF Fundraiser (bring on Lewis Black!) and he spent part of the afternoon with a handful of scribes at Busch Stadium….

TOWER GROVE — In a few days, newly-minted Chicago Cubs infielder Aaron Miles will have a reunion of sorts at a charity event with the manager that made him a millionaire. He expects the worst.

“I just talked to him, and Tony said,” Miles said, pausing for effect, “that he’s really going to give it to me.”

Miles, fresh from signing a two-year, $4.9-million deal with the Cubs, will attend an Animal Rescue Foundation benefit in California…

TOWER GROVE — As one of a sweeping series of moves the Chicago Cubs made this morning as possible prelude to reviving a Jake Peavy deal, the Cubs’ signing of infielder Aaron Miles dredged up a familiar refrain, heard before from former Cardinals like him.

“I’m excited to be a Cubbie,” Miles told Chicago Cub beat writers on a conference call this afternoon. “Being a Cardinal was great and that part is over now. Now I’m ready…

TOWER GROVE — Back during those 100-win salad days of 2004 and 2005, the St. Louis Cardinals’ tremendous success at the major-league level was a facade for what anyone with an eye on the minors knew, and knew well: It all could be fleeting.

A sobering reminder of the situation they put themselves in came the winter after the Cardinals juggernaut run to the National League pennant and World Series in 2004. Baseball America, viewed by…

LAS VEGAS — While wrapping my ears around Chinese Democracy, replaying Snow Patrol’s addictive new album and, for kicks, spinning ZZ Top’s cover of “Viva Las Vegas” on the trusty iPod, I also brought along a little research for this trip to the Baseball Winter Meetings. You never know what golden nugget of information you’ll find from one page to the next on the latest edition of The Bill James Handbook.

Picked up the 2009 edition, with…

St. Louis Cardinals starter Chris Carpenter’s troublesome nerve in his right shoulder has shown enough growth and improvement that the club is comfortable with him starting his throwing program in mid- to late January, Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak said. The GM added that the schedule would make Carpenter available for a normal spring training.

“It was a very positive report,” Mozeliak said. “The nerve is healing, healing at the normal rate. He has regained his shoulder…