TOWER GROVE — The final results of a radical re-write of the prospect rankings for St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league system just slid through the mail slot here at the home office.

The current issue of Baseball America ranks the top 10 prospects for each team in the National League Central, and you’ll hardly recognize the top 10 for the local nine. There are only two players from last year’s top 10 who remain in this year’s….

TOWER GROVE — Now we have encountered a problem with the polling, one not to different from the the quandary facing the St. Louis Cardinals or the one that all prospect ranking lists are bound to encounter when mining the Cardinals’ system for potential.

At some point, it becomes difficult to distinguish one prospect from the other and tricky to rank one first baseman against a reliever ahead of, say, a starting pitcher.

That’s what the Bird…

TOWER GROVE — The numerical bounty (especially when it comes to types of pitches) available at Fan Graphs has made that Web site increasingly valuable when it comes to using and exploring some of the — what’s the phrase we learned yesterday? — nouveau riche’s statistics that are out there.

But Fan Graphs, like so many sites these days, are also in the prospect-ranking business.

Marc Hulet, a writer at Fan Graphs, posted his St. Louis Cardinals…

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Not even the prom was enough to keep Robert Stock out of college.

Three years before his preference to play catcher helped make him a draft pick for the St. Louis Cardinals, Stock’s preference to get his baseball career started led to a pretty good line for a 17-year-old college freshman: Guess, he wasn’t going to the prom.

He said that in this television news report from his early days on campus:

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TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals admittedly don’t have the level of prospects out in the Arizona Fall League that they’ve had in the past. There is no Brett Wallace out there this season, for example. There are a few players auditioning for a spot on the 40-man roster — like Tyler Greene did last fall — but they aren’t expected to use that roster spot to vault into a major-league debut, as Greene…

TOWER GROVE — After a brief hiatus to artificially inflate the click totals on the previous poll — or so that I could play father for a few days, whichever — the Bird Land Community Top 21 returns today and will continue each weekday until it’s finished. There are seven spots remaining in the top 20, and then the 21st spot in the poll will be reserved for the Community Sleeper — the player that…

TOWER GROVE — Some members of the St. Louis Cardinals brass, including VP/farm director Jeff Luhnow and assistant general manager John Abbamondi, traveled west this week to see the Arizona Fall League and the prospects there in person. They were greeted with a marquee start — against their players.

Stephen Strasburg, the Washington Nationals’ No. 1 overall pick in last year’s draft and widely billed as the best pitching prospect to reach the draft in years,…

DOWNTOWN — One of the best bats in the St. Louis Cardinals system and one of the most reliable arms at their minor-league affiliates won the team’s organization awards for 2009. Outfielder/third baseman Allen Craig, who led Class AAA Memphis to a Pacific Coast League championship with his power, won the Player of the Year Award from the team. Righthanded starter Lance Lynn, who had a cameo appearance in Triple-A about a year after he…

TOWER GROVE — The Bird Land Community Top 21’s top 10 is completed, and we’re just about halfway through the annual ranking of St. Louis Cardinals prospects by readers here at the blog. The overarching lessons of the first 10 are two-fold: Voters have adopted the perceived franchise emphasis on winning now/contributing now and the Cardinals system, as a whole, is significantly diluted, even lacking.

Second baseman Daniel Descalso, who had one of a handful of…

TOWER GROVE — Another day, another runoff.

The fallout from the high-end changes to the St. Louis Cardinals’ depth chart of prospects appears to be close votes and very few clear-cut, obvious prospects who stand out above their peers. The vote for No. 9 in the Bird Land Community Top 21 is another example. Tyler Greene and Daniel Descalso are separated by a total of nine votes at last check. Greene has received 29 percent of…

TOWER GROVE — In what probably was the closest vote yet in any Bird Land Community prospect poll, Eduardo Sanchez, the fireballer righthanded reliever, took 52 percent of the vote in the runoff and will be your No. 7 prospect on the Top 21 poll this year. Lance Lynn, the steady starter, will be No. 8. At 4 o’clock St. Louis time on Monday one vote separated the two.

So, I gave the poll another day…

TOWER GROVE — The poll for No. 7 in the Bird Land Community Top 21 jockeyed back and forth all weekend, with some comments even declaring a winner — or, rather, declaring an opinion about the winner — just as the tide shifted. With about 775 clicks counted, Eduardo Sanchez led Lance Lynn by four votes at last check this morning.

Each received 34 percent of the vote and every other prospect is just about 200…

TOWER GROVE — Back in 2003, a high-profile draft-and-follow pitcher who received a stout bonus joined the St. Louis Cardinals and was described this way by Baseball America:

(He) has the highest ceiling of any St. Louis pitching prospect since Rick Ankiel. His fastball usually ranges from 90-92 mph, but it was clocked at 96 in the seventh inning of one start. He could pitch at 92-94 consistently as he fills out, and he has started…

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 — A couple summers ago, a young shortstop was available in the June draft that fit so many of the “buckets” that the St. Louis Cardinals look for in a high pick. He played a premium position. He played a position of some need for the team. He had strong, reliable numbers in a major NCAA conference, and his stats projected well through the metrics the Cardinals use help identify future performance. He…