DOWNTOWN — Back on Oct. 8, just a little bit after pitching coach Dave Duncan agreed to his new contract, a poll went up in this blog asking the simple question: Who closes? Some 1,300 readers voted and “anointed” Chris Perez the closer with 42 percent of the vote. (Brian Fuentes finished third, one spot behind where the Cardinals finished for his services.)

That poll, meant as a prelude to the St. Louis Cardinals’ search this winter,…

DOWNTOWN — One of the best aspects of spring training is the access each day to the backlots — the scattered fields behind Roger Dean Stadium that host drills, batting practice and some scrimmages, and that the prospects call home. Each day it’s possible to go back there and see Colby Rasmus step-in against, say, Jason Motte or Daryl Jones shag flies beside Jon Edwards. It’s not game speed, but it does allow you see the prospects in…

DOWNTOWN — With National League MVP Albert Pujols topping the charts with a $175 autograph fee, the St. Louis Cardinals announced this afternoon the schedule and cost for the annual autograph pell mell that is Winter Warmup in downtown St. Louis. A total of 81 former or current Cardinals are schedule to attend the autograph sessions that are the headline event at the three-day fanfest, January 17-19.

Admission passes for the event are $40 for adults, $10…

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…

LAFAYETTE SQUARE — As a result of having so many officially retired numbers and several unofficially retired numbers (See: 25, 51 and 32), the St. Louis Cardinals sported a lineup that at times resembled an offensive line. The team simply did not have enough lower numbers for Chris Perez, Joe Mather, Jason Motte, et. al., to score anything lower than Skip Schumaker’s 55 for their backs.

There were a lot of swingin’ 60s out there, and there…

TOWER GROVE — With the turn of the year behind us, ’tis the season for prospect rankings across the industry. Future Redbirds, the fan-fueled site that keeps tabs on the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league system, has been going through its Top 20 prospect, and just this morning John Sickels’ published his Top 20+ for the Cardinals’ system. Later this week Kevin Goldstein will release his Cardinals Top 11, and within a couple weeks the Baseball America Top 10…

TOWER GROVE — As I start writing this entry I’m watching another replay of Don Larsen’s perfect game on the shiny new MLB Network — man,  could I really go for a Gillette shave — and the game is just about to enter the ninth inning. What a new year’s treat to see the gem of the 1956 World Series and hear Vin Scully deftly avoid the karmic land mine that would be mentioning the perfect game.

Instead…

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…

TOWER GROVE — The 22nd-ranked prospect on last year’s Baseball America Cardinals’ Top 30 was Mark Worrell, and looking that up a few minutes ago reminded me of a way to judge prospects that I try to bring up as much as possible: Not where they fit within an organization, but who wants them outside the organization.

It strikes me, for example, that from that vaunted draft of 2005 — the draft that is credited with turning…

TOWER GROVE — Now where were we before being so completely interrupted by Las Vegas, the winter meetings, and enough blogging to this trusty, rusty laptop spewing consonants?

Oh, right, closing the polls on No. 18.

The St. Louis Cardinals tipped their hands with the club’s second pick of the most recent draft. Showing how much they value durability and predictability over, say, moonshots with talent or high-ceiling gambles, the Cardinals selected Ole Miss pitcher Lance Lynn….

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 — There’s a certain amount of hesitation here to close the voting for the No. 11 prospect because it is so close between the rising comet Niko Vasquez and blue-chip sinkerballer Clayton Mortensen. Both have received about 25 percent of the vote, and I’ve been refreshing all morning to see if there are precincts still logging in their votes …

And with 265 votes in, Vasquez edges Mortensen by a slim margin of six.

A…

TOWER GROVE — Every time there is a trade to be made or not made — hello, Jake Peavy — there is also a revealing referendum on the quality and quantity of talent in the St. Louis Cardinals’ minor-league system. That is always the best time to get an unvarnished view of the true rankings within an organization.

Today offers more subtle revelations.

The Cardinals announced Wednesday, a day early, that they will add shortstop Tyler Greene and…

TOWER GROVE — With the subtraction of the salaries for Mark Mulder, Braden Looper, Scott Spiezio, Juan Encarnacion and Jason Isringhausen (though possibly only briefly for him), the St. Louis Cardinals have a raw total of about $29 million in expiring contracts from their 2008 payroll. But presented with the question on whether the Cardinals had $25 million to even $30 million of flexibility for the coming season, an organization official was direct with his answer:

“You might…