La Russa asked me to ask you: Who would start Game 6?

Suppan just pitched Sunday. He's already going to be going on short rest Thursday if there's a game. So you'd rather have [Someone not very good] and Carpenter than Carpenter and Suppan?

The end-of-year gamble made sense because there were a lot of ways for the Cardinals to win without ever winning another game, and TWO more chances to win if they lost the Sunday game. (Rainout makeup and tiebreaker.)

Losing Game 6 means having to win Game 7 on the road, against a team that went 50-31 at home this year. The Cardinals, by the way, were a particularly bad road team: 34-47.

That's a very different situation.

Plus, if the Cardinals win Game 6, they get to set up their World Series rotation the way I assume they'd want, with Suppan pitching Game 1, Weaver Game 2 and Carpenter Game 3 (and Game 7 if nec.) all on full rest.

I think Suppan could go on short rest, and given the way he's been pitching, he could still nail it down while weary.

We're talking about TWO days rest! That's a good way to lose one (1) pitcher and one (1) job.

If they won Game 6 with Suppan or by committee, entirely possible against Maine, they could have Carp for Games 1, 4, and 7 of the WS.

Except that wouldn't happen. They'd have him for Games 1 and 5. Which would be nice.

Farnsworth, I wrote pretty much your letter as my column the next day in '03.

Sorry. You're right of course. Three days rest.

I still like Carpenter-Suppan on normal rest rather than Suppan-Carpenter on 3 and 5 days. Considering Carpenter pitched well but lost, I'd say this argument's a draw, no?

Lynx: A Little Big Man reference AND a Superfriends reference in the same sports column? I am impressed indeed.

I appreciate the kind words and I'm happy to be able to please you. But I have one question, and it's a serious one:

What's Superfriends?

Anon Actually, You are 1 for 5 on your series pics

Oh, shoot. That's right. I forgot. That will be corrected.

andrew: One thing I can't quite get my head round is the bullpen hierarchy, seemingly set in stone.

Welcome to the club! It wasn't always that way. Just the last 20 years or so. There are a lot of ways a person could try to explain it, but the best answer is probably just that that's the fashion right now. And it probably will be until someone is successful a few times using some other strategy.

But it's one of baseball's great debates, the role of relief pitchers, whether a team should use its closer in a rough spot in the seventh rather than saving him to get the last three outs in the ninth, etc.

Atiya: However, one fact gives me hope, and that's that even in their darkest hours against the Mets the Cardinals almost always scored in the inning immediately after the Mets scored.

I was intrigued by this and couldn't help looking it up to see if this was just an impression. It wasn't.

The Mets scored in 14 different innings. The Cardinals scored in their next half-inning eight times. That's a lot. And it seemed like more than that because they went 0-for-3 in Game 6 and threw a shutout in Game 3, so in the other five games, they scored in 8-of-11 innings following a score.

Unless I'm mistaken, big-league teams score in roughly 30 percent of their innings, on average. Over the whole series, the Cardinals scored in 16 of 61, or 26 percent, and the Mets in 14 of 62, or 23 percent. So 57 percent is a lot.

Now, I don't know if it means anything. Could it just have been a coincidence? If not, that suggests the Cardinals can choose which innings they score in, that they have significant control over it. If that's the case, then there's an obvious need for the Cardinals to improve in innings following an inning when the opponent didn't score. They were only 8-for-47 in those innings, 17 percent.

If they could just approach those innings with the same attitude they approached the innings following a score, they'd have the greatest offense of all time!

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CPinSF, thanks for the Rudi, er, catch.