TOWER GROVE — It would be tempting to begin any look at the St. Louis Cardinals’ bullpen and its search for additional power sources with the fact that the Cardinals relievers had the fewest strikeouts of any bullpen in the National League. Their 340 were the least in the majors by 21 behind Tampa Bay.

While that stat is telling, it’s not entirely revealing.

The Cardinals’ relievers also had to pitch the fewest innings of any bullpen….

TOWER GROVE — For the fourth time in the past five seasons, the St. Louis Cardinals will reach May Day with the best record in the National League Central. In 2005, 2006, 2008 and now 2009, the Cardinals have led their division after the first month of play, and in two of those previous three seasons they reached the playoffs.

And they’ve done it by seemingly getting younger and more inexperienced with every move.

The new model…

TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals hit the road today for a seven-day visit to the National League East and they leave home with much more than the five wins they got in six games.

They left Wrigley Field a little more than a week ago wondering about their bullpen and looking for a fifth starter while wondering if all this running around the bases (19 runs in three games at Wrigley) was actually getting…

JUPITER, Fla. — What is true for major-league spring training is also true in minor-league spring training: The statistics are the ends, and often the means are more important.

Consider Adam Ottavino’s day.

The former first-round pick had a garish line from Monday’s game against Class AA Jacksonville. It read:

4.2 IP, 7 H, 6 runs, 2 BB, 4 Ks

But there is a story behind the numbers. Five of those six runs were unearned, and he was darn…

JUPITER, Fla. — There is little doubt that Mark McCormick has the arm that merited a big signing bonus and early selection in the 2005 draft. He just hasn’t been able to do much with it. Injuries have hurt his development, but so has his inability to rein in that right arm.

Last season was billed as a pivotal one for the righthander. This one just better be a productive one.

McCormick, a starter since his days…

JUPITER, Fla. — Less than 50 feet from his locker in the St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse and on his way to the kitchen for a snack, outfielder Colby Rasmus cannot help but walk by a stack of copies of Baseball America. It’s right there by the shelves of bubblegum and sunflower seeds.

The current issue might be of especially interest to Rasmus as it’s the annual rankings of the Top 100 Prospects in baseball. One of the…

JUPITER, Fla. — Some of the best parts of our ever-expanding universe of online St. Louis Cardinals coverage are the slide shows that Post-Dispatch lens-crafter Chris Lee puts together from each and every day’s workouts.

If Lee sees it, there’s a good picture of it.

During the afternoon, Lee puts up a slide show from that day’s activities. They can be found at this link — Chris Lee Slide Shows — and they are updated daily. This afternoon, Lee…

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 — A few days before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training last February, six of the St. Louis Cardinals top pitching prospects — including Chris Perez and Mitchell Boggs — were invited to Jupiter, Fla., early for an experimental minicamp. They were there to learn the classics.

The concept was explained by the Cardinals then-new roving pitching instructor, Brent Strom:

“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Before coaches came along, Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax,…

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….