TOWER GROVE — The arbitration wallop the St. Louis Cardinals have been bracing for this winter came into view Tuesday with the exchange of salary figures around baseball. The Cardinals two unsigned and eligible players, outfielders Rick Ankiel and Ryan Ludwick, each are guaranteed to receive significant raises. The salaries that an arbitrator will choose between — if the two sides do indeed get to a hearing, that is — are there for everyone to…

DOWNTOWN — There will be much more in Tuesday’s Post-Dispatch about Albert Pujols’ meeting with the local media a few minutes ago, but there’s no reason not to share a little bit of it now, here, in those wonderful 140-character bursts from the Twitter feed.

(For all those editors out there who told me tighter, brighter, better — Twitter has won this battle, but not the war. Not the war.)

St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa was just…

DOWNTOWN — The first wave of St. Louis Cardinals players have had their moments behind the media room podium here Sunday in Day 2 of the Winter Warm-up, and the Twitter feed (dgoold) has been the quickest way to get out the comments and the news (such as it is). But many are worth repeating here, like a shotgun look at what’s been said and who’s saying it here:

Snippets from the feed — the Warm-up in…

DOWNTOWN — Cardinals’ closer candidate Chris Perez came to St. Louis this winter to have a scan taken of his achy ankle, and while the joint doesn’t hinder the work he’s trying to do on his delivery it has made his other offseason goal a tad trickier.

Perez said an MRI taken in November of his left ankle revealed a bone spur and bone inflammation. Surgery was considered, but because it doesn’t bother him when he…

TOWER GROVE — By definition, any list of the top 10 or top 30 prospects within the St. Louis Cardinals system is flawed. The concept itself has one glaring weakness: Cardinals prospects are compared only against Cardinals prospects, leaving the reader to wonder if a top-10 talent here is a top-five talent in Cleveland? Maybe a top 20 talent in Boston … and so on.

Rankings prospects within an organization has value. It just doesn’t have…

TOWER GROVE — The community ranking of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Top 30 prospects takes up a lot of time and many entries during its run, leaving so many things unanswered or unexplored. With the end of the Bird Land Community Top 30 coming last week, the blog is freed up for that sprint toward Valentine’s Day and the moment pitchers/catchers report.

But before Jupiter — a mere month away — there are some loose ends…

TOWER GROVE — Earlier this week, St. Louis Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan did the radio rounds and spoke about the closer role, closer candidates, the rotation and how so much hinges on the shoulder of Chris Carpenter. He also had a telling comment about his retooled bullpen. Asked in an interview on 101 ESPN if he was confident with the new-look left side of his bullpen, Duncan answered plainly, realistically.

He said he does not…

TOWER GROVE — Before we get to the final spot in the Bird Land Community Top 30, we should first discuss the top spots in another ranking of the St. Louis Cardinals’ system. Kevin Goldstein, the accomplished minor-league expert and pundit over at Baseball Prospectus, released his Cardinals Top 11 on Wednesday and said what we’ve been saying all along: “Spots one through four are almost too easy, but it’s a bit messy from there…

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 — It has been hard to miss the drumbeat for some prospects to be included in each day’s poll, and for the most part the poll has been responsive to those requests. There has been one notable exception. One consistent voter who has kept thumping away — stumping away — in the comment section about the pitcher whose due is long overdue in this poll.

A hint: Even the studious Future Redbirds described him as…

TOWER GROVE — According to the formula Major League Baseball and its member clubs use to determine a club’s overall payroll, the St. Louis Cardinals had the 11th-highest payroll in baseball last season and the American League champion Tampa Bay Rays had the third lowest.

The team with the highest payroll goes without saying. Check today’s headlines.

The payrolls for all 30 clubs were published this afternoon by The Associated Press, and the info is chocked with…

LAS VEGAS — In their past 420 games, a stretch that reaches all the way back deep into that golden season of 2006, the St. Louis Cardinals have had a grand total of ZERO games started and won by a lefthanded pitcher.

Since Mark Mulder won his start on June 15, 2006, the Cardinals have trotted out Mike Maroth, Randy Keisler, Jaime Garcia and Mulder (a few times) to make starts. That group has made 15 starts total…

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,…

SOUTH GRAND — One of the real problems with any club’s Top 30 is perspective. Whenever you rank players within one organization, you are, by definition, limiting the scope of how you judge — or perceive — their status as prospects.

The argument raging in the comments about David Freese and Allen Craig is a good example. Both have been voted as top-15 prospects here in the Community Top 30, and there have been several comments…

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…