Forgive for me jumping ahead, but I'm wondering what Jason Marquis will fetch in free agency. He throws hard (I think the new gun at Busch might be a little slow) and his medical history is as clean as a pitcher's can be, so from that angle he looks like a nice investment. Is there some GM out there who thinks his pitching coach can fine-tune Marquis to a point that his gaps in command will be filled (home run to Lee last night, not to mention sinkers at the letters)? While I probably don't want to try and figure out how Brian Sabean thinks, I do know that Marquis isn't a kid any more. This is his 11th season in pro ball and obviously he's been around in the majors for a while as he's almost a free agent. Maybe Mike Maddux could do with Marquis what he's done with today's Brewer starter, Doug Davis, the pitcher who "quietly" posted 200 strikeouts in 2005. It just seems to me it will always be a struggle with Marquis though.

Back on the farm... while doing my taxes, I listened to the Anthony Reyes start on Tuesday night. Nothing to report about the perfomance that the box score doesn't adequately convey (well, the homer Carmen Cali gave up was a bomb). The Memphis announcers did mention something I hadn't heard before, that Reyes and Junior Spivey are the two quietest members of the Memphis squad. You can guess where I'm going with this. While I'm sure it wasn't the deciding factor in either case, the presence of "edgy personality" Scott Spiezio in St. Louis suggests it probably didn't help Reyes's or Spivey's cause.

Memphis by the way is 0-7. The bullpen has picked up the losses in six of those games. The talk of spring training, Chris Duncan has 15 strikeouts in 31 at-bats. He seems to typify the Memphis roster: A lot of guys (Shaun Boyd, Travis Hanson, John Nelson, John Gall, Prentice Redman, Michel Herndandez) in their mid-20s who might put it together and have decent major league careers, but for whatever reason have not yet. We'll learn a little more about the pecking order when Larry Bigbie's in Memphis on rehab or back in St. Louis.