He-who-shall-not-be-named knows that something went horribly, horribly wrong last year. And he thinks he’s narrowed the cause of it down to a singular moment in time:

MESA, Ariz. — When St. Louis manager Tony La Russa let Jason Marquis absorb a pounding against the White Sox last June at U.S. Cellular Field, he did it to save the Cardinals’ bullpen.

Whether La Russa contributed to the downfall of his starter in 2006 is a question that’s open for debate.

Marquis’ earned-run average jumped from 4.55 to 5.53 after he gave up 13 runs in five innings to the Sox, and he never really recovered, finishing with a league-worst 6.02 ERA.

Did the beating on the South Side have a residual effect on the rest of Marquis’ season?

“It may have,” Marquis said Sunday. “Obviously it’s your free-agent year, and a lot of teams don’t always look at the full picture in terms of stats. They only [make decisions] based on numbers a lot of the time.”

Damn, you Tony LaRussa! In a futile effort to “save” your shoddy bullpen, you wound up screwing with He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named’s head, and you made him worry about his numbers, and that turned him into a horrible pitcher. And now WE’RE stuck with him!!!!

I hate to admit it, but He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and I seem to have much in common, as I tend to blame Tony LaRussa for a lot of the things that go wrong in my life, too. But never fear, Coach Larry is going to set him right as rain:

The Cubs’ signing of Marquis to a three-year, $21 million deal raised some eyebrows, mostly because the price tag and the ERA didn’t add up. He’s also viewed by some as Larry Rothschild’s special project because of the pitching coach’s influence on bringing him to Chicago, though Rothschild said that term is unwarranted.

“I don’t know that it’s a ’special project,’” he said. “This is a guy that basically, for the better part of two, 21/2 years, pitched pretty well. So it’s really getting him back to seeing what he was doing when he was pitching well. And if we can enhance anything off of that, then great.”

Actually, he’s been pretty terrible for the last year and a half, which is why we were all so upset that he was signed. Why do I get the feeling that Coach Larry didn’t research this as well as he could have? And why do the people running this show think it’s okay to reach back several years in defending a bad signing? Sammy Sosa’s been pretty great over the course of the last 10 years. He’s hit over 60 homeruns! Gah.
At any rate, Sweet Lou is firmly in his corner (I think):

Piniella indicated Marquis can alter his mental approach as well as his mechanics.

“He’s probably strung a little tighter,” Piniella said. “I think he’s the type of pitcher that when things aren’t going good, instead of pitching, he takes the malt-liquor-bull type of approach. Those are things we can work at a little bit.”

The “malt-liquor-bull” approach? Did he just say that his pitcher hits the bottle?

I’m so confused.