TOWER GROVE — And you thought Chris Carpenter had a monstrous season debut for the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday. Check the minors.

Down in Springfield, Mo., Brett Wallace made quite a first impression.

Carpenter took a no-hitter into the seventh inning and won his first regular-season game since he was backed by a three-run homer from Juan Encarnacion and out-pitched San Francisco’s Matt Morris in September 2006. The Cardinals’ returning — no longer rehabbing — ace allowed…

JUPITER, Fla. — The players who will open the season with the St. Louis Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate, the Memphis Redbirds, left this afternoon for Tennessee, where they will be joined tomorrow by the (newly revealed) big-league club. They took six starting pitchers with them.

Do the math and you’ll have a good idea that all six won’t be starting.

Adam Ottavino flew north with the Triple-A rotation — a bump up for the righthander from the original…

JUPITER, Fla. — That 2005 draft that the St. Louis Cardinals have billed as transformative for the organization had its first player make his major-league debut last year, could produce its first major-league contributor officially this weekend (see: Colby Rasmus), and it passed another milestone within the past couple weeks. One of the picks is coming out of retirement to try again.

Josh Wilson, a righthanded pitcher taken 70th overall, had his agent contact the Cardinals…

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. — However the St. Louis Cardinals third base position shakes out at the major-league level, it seems certain that first-round pick Brett Wallace will begin this season at Class AA Springfield. Few think that he will stay there for long.

Though given barely a second glance at the major-league camp this spring, Wallace has clicked along at his usual 3-for-5, 2-for-5 pace during minor-league games. On Saturday, he broke loose.

Wallace, a third baseman, went…

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. — The St. Louis Cardinals knew coming into camp who their two major-league catchers were going to be going into the regular season. Yadier Molina is the starter now, later and as long as the Cardinals can keep the Gold Glove-winning, rocket-armed Molina brother behind the plate. Jason LaRue was brought back — one of the first signings of the winter — to be his backup.

But after that …

One of the Cardinals most…

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…

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. — The plan was to play Curt Smith often, but not necessarily every day. Then Smith got in the lineup, his manager at Johnson City told me this past fall, and it was impossible to take him out. He just kept hitting. He hit his way from Johnson City all the way to the league’s Player of the Year award. He hit his way from that hardware all the way to Low-A Quad…

JUPITER, Fla. — One-time minor-league batting champion Isa Garcia was among five players released this morning in the first wave of cuts from the St. Louis Cardinals minor-league camp.

Garcia, a second baseman, was a 34th-round selection in the 2006 draft. He was identified by his college numbers, which stood out when the Cardinals ran them through their metrics thats normalize college stats from different conferences, different quality of opponents and different ballparks. Immediately, he looked…

JUPITER, Fla. — Two of the batters sent out “to get more playing time” — a common phrase these days as minor-league camp swirls into games — are thriving with the additional at-bats. One has continued his superb spring at the plate. The other may yet save his spring and put himself back on the cusp of the majors.

Both Allen Craig and Brian Barton homered for the St. Louis Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate in games Sunday….

JUPITER, Fla. — Big-bonus import Roberto De La Cruz made his spring game debut Thursday with the St. Louis Cardinals Low-A affiliate, and he rapped a couple hits, including a double. Just because the Dominican Republic teen is with a full-season squad to open the spring, doesn’t mean he’ll be with one when the season starts. De La Cruz received a record bonus, the highest ever given by the Cardinals to an international free agent,…