TOWER GROVE — Judging from some of the comments at the tails of the first three Bird Land Community Top 21 polls, one question continues to perplex many voters: What age is too aged to be a prospect?

There is no real answer.

The St. Louis Cardinals, as described by farm director Jeff Luhnow, have studied how high-end players — the top-notch, elite, standout prospects — reach the majors in their early 20s, and how they excel…

TOWER GROVE — Maybe it’s the time of year, what with the season just ending and the playoffs still going on. Maybe it’s how the season ended, with a St. Louis Cardinals team riding high expectations and fizzling when it mattered most. Maybe it’s a fanbase adopting the win-now attitude shown by the front office.

Maybe it’s just a lack of patience.

Whatever the reason, the Bird Land Community Top 21 is two votes old and already…

CREVE COEUR — It didn’t take long for the Bird Land Community Top 21 to throw its first curveball. Not that it’s a surprise lefthanded starter Jaime Garcia won the No. 1 spot in the readers’ rankings of St. Louis Cardinals’ prospects. It’s just wasn’t close.

That was unexpected.

Garcia pulled away from first-round fireballer Shelby Miller and had more than twice as many votes. As of last check — a few seconds ago — Garcia had…

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…

HOUSTON — With 2009 speeding to a close, discussions about the decade behind us are already popping up. Some baseball writers, like Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci’s have picked their Team of the Aughts, others have just explored who might be the Player of the Decade. Here we’ve been convicted of over-stating the Decade Triple Crown notion (scroll down).

Time to look at the bigger picture.

In the past week or 10 days, the St. Louis Cardinals have clinched the…

DOWNTOWN — For the second time in as many playoff games, St. Louis Cardinals prospect third baseman and St. Louis native David Freese homered to provide the only run Triple-A Memphis needed.

In the clincher of the Redbirds first-round playoff series against Albuquerque, Freese hit a opposite field home run that proved the difference in a 1-0 victory. Last night, in Memphis, Freese broke a scoreless tie in the sixth inning of the Pacific Coast League championship…

TOWER GROVE — John Smoltz, the St. Louis Cardinals’ recent booster shot for their rotation, freely admits that he’s had a lot of time to think about things in his highly decorated major-league career, and one day he decided to figure out his personal odometer.

For every year of his big-league career but this one, Smoltz had the same route to the ballpark. It was a 70-mile round trip from his house to the parking lot…

DOWNTOWN — St. Louis Cardinals first-round pick and top prospect Brett Wallace is headed to Class AAA Memphis less than a year after the Cardinals drafted him with the 13th pick. Wallace, who leaves behind a .281 batting average at Class AA Springfield, will be the starting third baseman for the Cardinals Triple-A affiliate.

Wallace’s promotion was necessitated Friday when the club decided to place David Freese on the disabled list. Freese continues to experience soreness…

TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals have managed three runs total in the first two games of the series that concludes tonight at PNC Park. Albert Pujols has driven in two of those three runs. Two of the three runs have come from solo home runs, by Pujols and Skip Schumaker.

Where has all the offense gone? Why, it’s on rehab.

The R&R of what Bernie Miklasz called appropriately this morning the Cardinals’ “first crisis stage…

DOWNTOWN — St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Adam Wainwright spent much of his early major-league career studying and mimicking the ace of the Cardinals staff, Chris Carpenter. Beyond just watching how he pitched and what he did to bedevil hitters, Wainwright even wanted to borrow Carpenter’s mannerisms.

It’s no wonder he remembers vividly the last time he saw Carpenter start. It was at Wrigley Field, against the Chicago Cubs, and Carpenter wasn’t feeling right. Something was…

DOWNTOWN — It was only three years ago, on the first day the St. Louis Cardinals saw their new digs and got to take swings at breaking down the new dimensions, that Albert Pujols wrote himself into the history of Busch Stadium III with a swing few people saw. According to witnesses who attended that 2006 workout, Pujols hit a ball that bounced out of the ballpark and onto Clark Street.

He was at it again Sunday.

“Isn’t…

JUPITER, Fla. — That 2005 draft that the St. Louis Cardinals have billed as transformative for the organization had its first player make his major-league debut last year, could produce its first major-league contributor officially this weekend (see: Colby Rasmus), and it passed another milestone within the past couple weeks. One of the picks is coming out of retirement to try again.

Josh Wilson, a righthanded pitcher taken 70th overall, had his agent contact the Cardinals…

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The best way that St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa believed he could keep Skip Schumaker’s bat in the lineup was to put his glove to use elsewhere.

The official pronouncements came in the past week from GM John Mozeliak and La Russa that Schumaker will open the regular-season as the Cardinals’ starting second baseman — will, in fact, be now designated on the roster as a capital-I Infielder. Schumaker openly…

FORT MYERS, Fla. — For the most part, every player I’ve approached this spring with the 20 or so questions that make up The P-DQ has gamely taken the time to answer them. Sometimes they breeze through them with short, precise answers. Sometimes they labor over them, crafting an answer. Often they draw a crowd of teammates who encourage or needle their answers.

And then there was Dustin Pedroia.

The Boston Red Sox second baseman, reigning American…

JUPITER, Fla. — Each day the major-league club borrows a few minor leaguers to help fill out the bench. Tomorrow David Freese is going north with the team to Viera, Fla., and he could possibly start at third base. Today the club “borrowed” Daryl Jones and Amaury Cazana (nee Marti). Sometimes the minors get to see the field. Sometimes they just get to see the major leaguers take the field.

On Thursday, for the long bus ride…