TOWER GROVE — The C.C. Sabathia era in Milwaukee was barely a few innings old this evening and the ink wasn’t yet dry on the news reports of the Cubs acquiring Rich Harden when one of the Brewers’ broadcasters said something to this effect:

“Your move Cardinals.”

The jockeying for supremacy in the National League Central bounded out of the standings and into the front offices the past two days, as the Cardinals chief rivals…

TOWER GROVE – Naturally, Albert Pujols comes off the disabled list this afternoon to have (ho hum) another four-hit (yawn) day and (no big whoop) drive in the go-ahead run seconds ago here in the ninth inning.

So if you had Pujols in the pool about which would return first — the MVP or the P-D mailbag — you win. But only by five plate appearances.

After a sabbatical of sorts to get the inbin good…

TOWER GROVE — The last bundle of mail exchanged between readers and the Cardinals vice president of player procurement and farm director Jeff Luhnow featured some of the finer-tuned questions in this couple weeks of PostCards.

Of specific interest to readers is the idea of cost-benefit analysis when it comes the draft. There were many questions about it over the past two weeks and I tried to capture the repetition by selecting a few representatives….

TOWER GROVE — In the second posting of three mailbags with the Cardinals’ vice president and draft director Jeff Luhnow, he fields a variety of questions from readers, ranging from the Rick Porcello lessons to the Anthony Reyes-Colby Rasmus comparisons and concerns.

For a feel of the kind of schedule Luhnow is keeping in the weeks leading up to the draft — June 5 and 6 — consider that from the time we started harvesting…

SOUTH GRAND — The second (big) batch of questions posed to Cardinals vice president and draft director Jeff Luhnow will be up shortly. Got to give the guy time as he flew from Texas to Venezuela to Jersey to Florida to … well, wherever his passport and scouting reports will take him, apparently.

In the meantime, you’re stuck with this, no exclamation points earned or needed.

Solid wave of mail hit the PostCards address in…

TOWER GROVE – With the draft approaching, Cardinals vice president of player procurement and farm director Jeff Luhnow is a traveling man.

Constantly traveling.

There’s less than three weeks before the draft and soon the Cardinals will be holding scouting workouts at various sites around the country — and scout meetings at each place. While the Cardinals held a mock draft this past winter to help get more familiar with the amateur players available this June, and take…

TOWER GROVE — The Cardinals draft gurus are entering the final stretch of scouting and preparation for the amateur draft, which is less than a month away. The Cardinals hold the 13th pick of the draft, the earliest pick they have had since selecting outfielder Shaun Boyd at 13 in 2000.

As the Cardinals begin to see production from their most recent drafts — from Mike Parisi (c/o 2004) to Skip Schumaker (c/o 2001) to Chris…

GRAND CENTER — Both Chicago papers are reporting that Jim Edmonds could be a Cub shortly after he flies off waivers this week, having been released over the weekend by San Diego. A signature Cardinal — one of several members of the 2004 pennant-winning team to have a tough weekend (Julian Tavarez, for example) — is said to be attractive to the Cubs as an option other than youngster Felix Pie in Wrigley Field’s center…

GRAND CENTER — It was about 300 at-bats ago center fielder Rick Ankiel made his debut as a major-league outfielder, and tonight’s home run was his 18th since he made his return on August 9, 2007.  Track that statistics from that day forward and Ankiel ranks with baseball’s best sluggers — and one sudden star coming to town this week — in such numbers as homers, RBIs and slugging.

From August 9 until the start of…

DOWNTOWN — A new spin on a couple old attempts here at the blog: We’re going to splice the pseudo-chat from the old days (before the advent of the new-fangled chats) with the live blogging from a couple weeks ago.

Voila! PostCards Live!

Will be joining the gang at FSN Midwest for tonight’s pre-game show. Then at first pitch, 7:05 p.m. St. Louis time, I will return here to ask questions and fire off thoughts…