Get it out of the way: Chris Carpenter is a stopper and somebody woke up Jim Edmonds.

I did go to an Indianapolis Indians game Tuesday night and Jose Lima was there. Instead of being in the dugout, he was on the main concourse charting pitches in the wheelchair row behind the home plate section. He was having a great ole time, high-fiving Met fans, shaking hands and chatting with anyone and everyone. If he wasn't enjoying himself, then he is the best actor I've ever seen.

I got back home and found that Jason Marquis had surrendered 12 runs. Perhaps his true physical talent in some Platonic sense hasn't been altered, but Tuesday's game raised an obvious question: What if there's something about LaRussa and his pitcher usage that causes problems down the road? I don't know what it would be, maybe he wears them down (although his "pitcher abuse points" suggest otherwise) or maybe Duncan's smoke and mirrors set only lasts a year or two. That is something we can make some attempt at testing.

Let's look at LaRussa's pitchers since 1987 (his first full season with the A's) and let's break their work under LaRussa into seasons under LaRussa. That's 401 pitcher-seasons, a decent-sized body of work. So, for Rick Ankiel for example, 1999 would be his first season, 2000 his second season, 2001 his third season and 2004 his fourth season. Breaking it up that way for everybody, I get this:

Well, not much deterioration there until year 5. The space gets small enough by then that those probably aren't particularly meaningful. Ron Darling's 1995 season (his last) and Dave Stewart's 1991 season weigh heavily in that year. In case you're wondering, Dennis Eckersley pitched 11 seasons for LaRussa and Rick Honeycutt made it through parts of 10.

OK, so maybe there's a problem with who I'm counting in season 1's. Rick Ankiel's 1999 season, for example, isn't really what we think of as his first season. And we probably would do well to get rid of the Bobby Bonilla season (Bonilla was brought in to be a Wally Pipp to Albert Pujols and to mess up my Lahman database pitching queries). So let's not start the clock until a pitcher either has 10 starts or 25 appearances under LaRussa. Under this alternative, 2000 is Ankiel's first season, 2001 his second and 2004 his third. We'll consign 1999 to the dustbin.

That doesn't change the picture all that much, does it? I think the simplest explanation for the matter at hand is that Jason Marquis just isn't that good.

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At the risk of sounding snarkier than I'd like, the John Gall Era is ending. Gall was something of a symbol of the Cardinals' struggles with their farm system. Gall wasn't an embarrassing prospect and he did work all the way up the ladder, but his eminence among Cardinal farmhands was an indication that something needed to be changed. It seems to me that something is changing.

My other stray thought comes from Wednesday's night game. I only saw the last couple of innings, which in the NBA jargon were garbage time. One thing that bothered me was Andruw Jones's bases empty walk against Braden Looper in the 9th. Looper got up 0-2 against Jones, and Yadier Molina proceeded to do what he frequently does in that situation, crouching behind the opposing batter's box for a pitch that might've been two feet outside. This isn't specific to Molina, as I remember the Cardinal-trained Mike Difelice doing the exact same thing in 2002. For all the talk about the efficiency benefits of pitching to contact, the Cardinals treat 0-2 and 1-2 counts like a burden that must be lightened before the at-bat ends.