JUPITER, Fla. • When Shelby Miller, pride of Brownwood High and next-generation Texas gunslinger, settled into a chair surrounded by friends to watch the 2009 amateur draft, he had heard he could go as high as fourth overall and knew he would go no lower than 21st.

The Houston Astros, the home-state club he grew up adoring, had No. 21 and an agreement in place, Miller says, if he slipped to them. As the picks clicked by, Miller saw his team coming into view. Toronto wasn’t going to take him at No. 20. The Cardinals were on the clock at 19. He didn’t know much about them. It didn’t dawn on him that the T-shirt he slipped on that morning was Cardinals red. It didn’t register until later that as he arrived for the draft party hosted by a friend he walked by a redbird knickknack.

“It’s funny now,” Miller says, “I guess it was meant to be.”

He just didn’t see the signs.

The Cardinals were certain they did.

With the 19th selection, the Cardinals changed their way. Miller was, as one former executive phrased it, the “landmark pick” that revealed how the Cardinals would evaluate, develop, and collect the young, talented pitchers they now follow into the 2014 season.