Game 121 Open Thread: August 18, 2005

marquis vargas
9-11, 4.22 6-6, 4.57

baseball prospectus rates jason marquis as the sixth-most overworked starting pitcher in baseball. he has thrown 110 or more pitches in 9 of 24 starts this season, accumulating 60,136 pitcher abuse points. more than half of those came in a single start -- the now-infamous 132-pitch outing against san diego. to put this in perspective, marquis' arm sustained more stress in that single game than chris carpenter's arm has incurred all season long -- even though carp has thrown 20 percent more innings than jason. and it's even worse than that: the lion's share of the stress came in a single inning of that start, the ill-advised and ill-fated 9th . . . . .

the last time st louis had a pitcher in the top 10 on BP's pitcher-abuse-points list -- woody williams in 2003 -- he struggled the last two months of the season (sound familiar?), then came up lame-armed the next spring.

i'm just a fount of positive vibes today, aren't i? well as long as i'm spewing gloom, let me toss out one more thought: the cards last night completed their quest for mlb's best record, giving rise to much rejoicing among birdfans. keep in mind that over the last 20 years, only three teams with the best regular-season record went on to win the world series: the 86 mets, 89 a's, and 98 yankees.

have a nice day ev'yone . . . .

Update [2005-8-18 20:22:16 by lboros]: if you haven't seen this rumor at a fellow SB Nation site, i bet you'll find it interesting