TOWER GROVE — On the eve of Thanksgiving, we can say this about the monthlong process of putting together the Bird Land Community Top 21: We know who the first 20 players are. We just don’t know the final order.

In a prospect poll loaded with close votes, recurring debates and a bunch of a new names and new looks, it is fitting that it would finish with a runoff. Especially a runoff pitting these two…

TOWER GROVE — A year has passed but the conversation remains strikingly similar.

About 12 months ago, the Bird Land Community Top 30 reached No. 19 in its poll, and the discussion hinged around two righthanded starters: the recently drafted Lance Lynn and the rising changeup artist P.J. Walters. Lynn edged Walters in the voting for No. 18, and Walters then claimed a win at No. 19. Scroll forward to today and Lynn has surged to…

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…

TOWER GROVE — It seems that St. Louis Cardinals’ first-round pick and shortstop prospect Pete Kozma is often judged for the player he isn’t and never will be as opposed to the player he is or could be.

Kozma is not Rick Porcello. No news there.

Yet, that fact seems to bludgeon Kozma’s chances in prospects polls like this one, the Bird Land Community Top 21. He’s dismissed because of something he had no role in and…

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 — St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is fond of saying that outfielder Chris Duncan had a heckuva season split into two half seasons. When he’s healthy, he’s always hit, La Russa says of the Cardinals quick-starting leftfielder.

For proof, La Russa fuses Duncan’s second half of the 2006 season and the 2007 season into a statistical alloy — a numerical show of what he believes Duncan could do given a full season…