TOWER GROVE — As St. Louis Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak has been describing it recently, he and manager Tony La Russa have been in “constant contact” over the past week or so about the playoff roster. Mozeliak has said that La Russa carries an informal final say with the roster because it is La Russa who will pull the levers and push the buttons and deploy the pinch runners available to him on said…

TOWER GROVE — Twice this season, St. Louis Cardinals starter Joel Pineiro has had streaks of four consecutive starts without walking a batter. Thirteen times this summer, he has started a game and not allowed a walk. For this, he credits his father.

“My dad taught me that,” he said this past weekend. “You don’t want to walk people. You don’t want to let them get on base. You don’t want to help them start their…

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 player that inspired the St. Louis Cardinals’ biggest and costliest move yet into the international free-agent market came to Busch Stadium on Monday, taking a few souvenirs from the big leaguers and leaving an impression.

Outfielder Wagner Mateo, the Dominican Republic teen phenom that merited a record $3.1-million contract from the Cardinals, took batting practice at Busch and did hit a home run — an opposite field shot into the left-field bullpen….

HOUSTON — St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Mark DeRosa didn’t see his first hit for his new team as a relief. He described it as progress.

In DeRosa’s first at-bat Monday night at Minute Maid Park, he stung a single to left field and a couple at-bats later he had his second hit of the game and his second hit as a Redbird. Like the first one, DeRosa’s hit went to the left side of the…

HOUSTON — This past weekend it was a familiar face that fed the St. Louis Cardinals their first loss of the second half, and this week it’s a familiar race that confronts them in their first road series of the second half.

The Cardinals arrive in Houston to find an Astros team unexpectedly and inexplicably still in the race, sitting four games back of the division-leading Cardinals and certainly buoyed by the second-half surges of seasons…

DOWNTOWN — There was the play made up the middle in the ninth inning Tuesday that sent second baseman Skip Schumaker far to his right to glove the grounder and fire rapidly for the out. There was any of the three hits that Chris Duncan had, including his home run in the sixth inning. There was the single by Rick Ankiel, the save over the weekend by Ryan Franklin, the standout job at shortstop by…

TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals inexplicably annual interleague series against the Detroit Tigers begins tonight at Busch Stadium. It will be the Tigers’ first visit to the Cardinals’ crib since Brandon Inge waved past an Adam Wainwright slider and good bye to the 2006 World Series.

But it’s not like the Cardinals haven’t seen the Motown Nine since then.

In a constant quirk of interleague play, the Cardinals continue to play Detroit every season. This…

TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals showed a pulse offensively Tuesday night in Florida, but it still wasn’t enough as they failed to score more than three runs for the 12th time in 16 games. They have produced the fewest runs and the fewest baserunners in baseball since the beginning of May. They have the lowest on-base percentage (.276) this month in the National League.

But, hey, they conjured their fourth three-run inning in the…

TOWER GROVE — The consensus is that while this draft may have the biggest headliner baseball has seen in a long time — San Diego State pitcher Stephen Strasburg is being billed as “Best Prospect Ever?”, always with that essential question mark — the overall depth of this draft is seriously lacking.

There are some good pitchers, enough to fill out the first round. There aren’t many position players, especially coming from the college level.

One thing…

TOWER GROVE — When the Milwaukee Brewers held their meetings to discuss the St. Louis Cardinals’ hitters for this series at Busch Stadium, they invited a pitcher who wasn’t originally scheduled to throw in this series. But, the coaches figured, Braden Looper might have something to offer about his former teammates.

Now they’ll see what he has to offer against his former teammates.

Friday’s rainout forced both teams to reset their rotations. The Cardinals recalled Friday’s starter,…

CREVE COEUR — It’s a story worth telling again: As the 28th pick of the 2005 draft approached for the St. Louis Cardinals, their plan was to take the athletic shortstop from Georgia Tech, a middle infielder who many believed had a safe-best and projectable path to the majors. And then they caught wind that another team was sniffing around the high school, high-ceiling player the Cardinals planned to take 30th.

The Cardinals, led by Jeff…

TOWER GROVE — A bark will do it. But not any old bark. It’s got to be a good, hearty robust, UGA-worthy bark that gets Adam Wainwright’s attention.

The past couple years, before each spring training the paper dispatches me to write a travel story about St. Louis Cardinals spring training in Jupiter, Fla. And an annual part of the story is getting hints and suggestions on how to land a player’s autograph. Most subscribe to the…

TOWER GROVE — As much as health and staying in good shape throughout spring training has boosted St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Joel Pineiro on his strong start to this season, the righthander does have a silver bullet to explain his 3-0 record. He came into this season with a revived faith in his two-seam fastball, and, as teammate Kyle Lohse said Wednesday night, “he’s out there throwing it like it’s some kind of new toy.”

Behold,…

TEMPE, Ariz. — If St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols scores the National League Player of the Week award for the first week of this season it will be the second consecutive P-O-W award he’s won dating back to the last week of last season.

It will also be an upset of sorts

The Cardinals present two candidates for the weekly award: Pujols, who had that seven-RBI Saturday, and Kyle Lohse, whose Easter Sunday shutout punctuated…