That Jason Marquis signed a contract in mid-January isn’t particularly surprising; that he signed it with the Cardinals… well, that’s the surprising part. If you believe the Hot Stove Hype he’s been offered in exchange for seventy to eighty different players over the offseason, some of whom I am told do not even play baseball.

In all this hubbub over Bravin Wilkermench and the Cavalcade of Outfielders that were supposed to replace Marquis on the Cardinals payroll, not a lot of attention has been paid to what he’s actually going to do this year. I’m not worried about the money; at this point it’s readily apparent that Cardinals ownership isn’t flexible, so it was probably either spend the $5 million on resigning Marquis or flush it. But as for performance… well, there were, give or take, three very different pitchers named Jason Marquis putting on the uniform last year. I’ve separated them, rather arbitrarily, like this (thanks DbDDB!):

And, yes, he did have a very nice July, but I assimilated it in because a) I forgot about it initially and b) his peripherals weren’t very good, anyway. But that’s not the point. If you’ll remember, that shutout came after Dave Duncan asked, pretty much, that he just throw strikes. And Marquis–not known as a very coachable guy–threw two walks in his last 40 innings. Okay then.

Obviously, his ERA wouldn’t stay like that even if he did keep the ridiculous K:BB ratio. But if he continues to play the role of Bob Tewksbury–a bit of a departure from his last job as a Groundball Specialist™–he could put up his best season as a Cardinal yet. (For the record, Carlos Silva led baseball last year with a walk rate of 0.43, which is even more ridiculous because he did it over 188 innings.)

But will he be able to do it? He couldn’t keep the sterling G:F ratio from 2004 into 2005, so it’s anyone’s guess, but for what it’s worth he looked like a totally different pitcher from that one game on. He cut everything but the fastball out of his regular repertoire, and he–to use the cliche–went right after hitters. It was a far cry from the tentative Marquis from early in the season, who would go up 0-2 on a hitter only to throw three curveballs in the dirt.

And then there’s the hitting. But we don’t need to break that down; it pretty much comes down to “Don’t throw him a fastball.”