TOWER GROVE — Several innings before Ryan Ludwick launched his fourth home run in three games and even before he extended his hitting streak to seven games, the resemblance between him and the early-season favorite for MVP leapt off the page.

Before each game, the Cardinals’ media relations staff puts out the two teams’ starting lineups on one sheet of paper. By each position player’s name is his triple-crown stats. On Sunday night, these two sets…

TOWER GROVE — The race for the National League MVP is a lot like the league standings — a jumbled  scrum of near-contenders with no clear-cut favorite charging to a runaway (or even certain) title.

A funny thing happened on the way to Prince Fielder swinging off with the Mountain man’s trophy, the Brewers were tapped out of first place. Albert Pujols has re-entered the picture as bona fide candidate, Jose Reyes is up to speed…

TOWER GROVE — Seeing that it’s Groundhog Day I was tempted just to re-paste yesterday’s post in today’s spot,  iron out a few of the typos, take the extra time to learn ice-sculpting and call it a weekend. But that would be cheating and it wouldn’t be as funny in practice as it seems in theory.

So, it’s time for the annual tour of the new baseball projection books hitting shelves.

What better day for predictions than…

TOWER GROVE — For one of the Sunday Hot Corners late in the season, we attempted to calculate the “V” in MVP and illustrate what hitters had the best claim to the award. One thing was missing from those aggregate rankings.

Defense.

The National League MVP will be awarded tonight, and and a couple of players with St. Louis ties will finish one-two in the voting. Either St. Louis native Ryan Howard will win or St. Louis…