CREVE COEUR — They are at very different stages in their careers, at very different positions and they were talking about two very different subjects, but St. Louis Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter and minor-league outfielder Tyler Henley hit on the same theme during interviews I had with them Wednesday.

In discussing how his career changed when he won the Cy Young Award back in 2005, Carpenter described how expectations changed around him. He wasn’t just the…

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,…

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 — 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…

TOWER GROVE — It started as a cumbersome, at-times chaotic, count-by-hand poll posted in the Cardinals’ message board here at StlToday.com. Through four years and four attempts to refine the process it has improved to an at-times cumbersome and slightly less chaotic poll based here at Bird Land.

But, hey, we no longer have to count it by hand. Viva technology.

With the St. Louis Cardinals’ season over with the sudden sweep by the Los Angeles Dodgers,…

TOWER GROVE — Like a football team sending out its sticky-finger troops to recover or defend an on-side kick, manager Tony La Russa has taken to deploying a Good Hands Team when it comes to late-inning leads.

During spring training La Russa first acknowledged that the experimental defensive assignments — most notably Skip Schumaker at second base — would inspire late-game moves for defensive purposes. It could include as many as three players shifting positions. That…

TOWER GROVE — The best spot in baseball to get a batter going may be batting second in the St. Louis Cardinals’ lineup, ahead of reigning MVP Albert Pujols. But the hardest spot in baseball to keep a batter going apparently is Cardinals’ cleanup, one spot behind Pujols.

Witness Chris Duncan.

Cast in the cleanup role several times during the previous home stand, Duncan struggled there. But thrown into the No. 2 spot for the first time…

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. — Violent weather, including a reported tornado a few blocks away from the ballpark, moved into the area about a half hour after the St. Louis Cardinals affiliates finished their camp games Tuesday at Roger Dean Stadium. An early start time and quick games allowed the minor leaguers to finish before rain lashed the fields and angry winds kicked up all kinds of dirt and wood chips that surround the area.

Still, they got…

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. — Weather threatened to wash out an entire day of minor-league games all across the Grapefruit League on Sunday. Advisories zipped around the inboxes of minor-league officials announcing how games here were cancelled, games there were cancelled.

But games involving the St. Louis Cardinals’ affiliates went on — though not entirely as scheduled.

Some quick thinking and re-organizing by camp coordinator Mike Shildt and coaches Derek Lilliquist and Dyar Miller allowed the Cardinals to race…

JUPITER, Fla. — As innings get more scarce and at-bats get more important late in spring training, some of the major-league players — or, more precisely, those battling for major-league jobs — have to find their swings and their pitches elsewhere. Enter the minor-league games.

The trip across the state and a couple other assignments put me a couple days behind on the Vuch Reports. How better to spend an overcast Sunday back here at the…

JUPITER, Fla. — One of the tricky things about reading box scores from spring training back there in the northern tundra is the inability to see the defensive side of the game. It’s impossible to know how Skip Schumaker is adjusting to second base this late in the camp or how he and Khalil Greene are clicking as a double-play combo without the benefit of something beyond the box score.

Ditto with the minors — only…

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — During his daily morning briefing with the media today, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon said he was reading a copy of Branch Rickey’s book last year and realized that before Rickey, Rogers Hornsby and Sam Breadon came along the Cardinals weren’t much. And, yet, Maddon went on to say the Cardinals now standout as one of the most successful franchises of the past century.

“It’s very complimentary” that people now talk…