Marquis gets top billing today

ST. LOUIS -- Not much will be at stake tonight when Jason Marquis walks to the mound at Busch Stadium.

Not much, other than a season, with the Cardinals trailing the Red Sox in the World Series, three games to none.

Marquis, the Game 4 starter, has hardly been a stopper on the St. Louis staff. In fact, the righthander, who posted a 15-7 record during the regular season, has been mediocre in his three postseason starts. His last start was Game 4 of the National League Championship Series against the Houston Astros, when he allowed three runs in four-plus innings. Overall, he has pitched 8 1/3 innings in the postseason, allowing nine hits and six runs.

One of those innings was in Sunday night's Game 2, when manager Tony La Russa, wanting to get Marquis some work, used him in relief at Fenway Park. His effort -- 25 pitches, two walks -- was hardly noteworthy, and the Cardinals lost, 6-2, but Marquis tried to get something out of it.

"The day was a normal bullpen day for me," he said. "I felt pretty good out there. I felt like I was in my rhythm and able to throw all my pitches. I got my work in, kept us in the game, and came out of it feeling good. I couldn't ask for much more than that."

But when you're on the brink of elimination in the World Series, you need to ask for more than just feeling good.

During the regular season, Marquis got that. His win total was a career high, as were his 201 1/3 innings.

But according to La Russa, Marquis has a tendency to push himself, perhaps too much. He's the kind that doesn't like to come out of games.

"He's one of those guys that has a hero complex," said La Russa. "He's going to tell you he's ready to pitch. He says he feels physically good. If you believe him, you've got to be careful.

"There's an old coaching thing about you don't ever want to coach aggressiveness and enthusiasm out of players. It's too important a quality. But the most important way you do it is to take the ball away from them.

"He's pitched six, seven innings and looked like he's done and you tell him at the end of the inning you're going to make a change and he's begging you to go back out there -- `I feel great, I feel great' -- and you have to make a decision and stick with it."

Marquis says he will try to keep tonight's start as normal as possible. "You don't know what it's going to be like until you go out there and start warming up for a game," he said. "What I try to do is slow everything down in my mind and slow the game down. Once you get out there, it's going to be pretty quick. You're going to have to make adjustments on the go. When I warm up in the bullpen, I try to create my tempo of what it's going to be like in the game."

No matter the tempo, Marquis knows he has reached the point when he needs to control what happens for as long as he can. It's his team's last chance.