Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 25, 2007
Cardinals Might Try Four?

Tony La Russa tinkered with the idea of a four-man rotation:

La Russa also released the order of the Cardinals starting rotation. As expected, Chris Carpenter will be the Opening Night starter, and Kip Wells and Braden Looper will follow against the Mets. After Carpenter opens the series at Houston on April 6, Adam Wainwright and Anthony Reyes will take the mound.

The success of the Cardinals starters this spring has been a bonus for La Russa, who said he had considered downsizing the number of players in the team's rotation to four.

"Because of how well these guys have gone about everything we'll be pitching five guys," La Russa said.

Given that Looper isn't striking out anyone this spring, there's a good chance he gets hammered as a starter. I wonder if La Russa will go with a four-man rotation if that happens?


Posted by David Pinto at 08:10 PM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

wow. no offense to looper, but i kind of hope he does get bombed. i'd love to see someone give the 4-man rotation a shot.

Posted by: amos at March 25, 2007 10:13 PM

4-man rotation??? What? is he drunk???

Posted by: j at March 25, 2007 10:28 PM

Why not? This is the same guy who tried the whole bullpen ace experiment back in the late 80s early 90s in the As, after all.

Posted by: Yamen at March 25, 2007 10:47 PM

i don't think starters gonna be wanting to start 40 something games and pitching near 300 innings.

Posted by: lisa gray at March 25, 2007 11:14 PM

From this article...
http://www.stltoday.com/blogs/sports-bird-land/2007/03/the-rotation-revealed/#more-10607

"The Cardinals entered spring entertaining the idea that they would exploit the off days in April to use a four-man rotation, with only irregular cameo appearances by the fifth starter. On Sunday, manager Tony La Russa gathered his five starters and told them he has decided to go in a different direction."

If Looper is pitching well, he'll get a turn. If not, they'll be able to get by with the other 4 guys for a few weeks. I don't believe there was never any serious consideration of going all season with a four man rotation.

Posted by: musial6 at March 25, 2007 11:37 PM

"i don't think starters gonna be wanting to start 40 something games and pitching near 300 innings."

Math isn't your strong suit.

Say that each starting slot gets 200 IP per year. Divide that 200 among the 4 starters - that's an extra 50 IP each. Add in the fact that having only 4 starters allows you to have an extra arm in the bullpen, meaning a manager isn't worried about tiring out those arms, and that 250 IP reduces a bit - 25 IP at a minimum.

A 4 man rotation is not a huge increase in work - it's a huge increase in productivity by avoiding a marginal 5th starter.

Posted by: NoPepperGames at March 26, 2007 11:40 AM

The bigger issue is the amount of rest between starts. Not many pitchers can go on short rest without seeing a dropoff in performance, and some guys see significant improvement when they get extra rest. In the case of the Cardinals, Chris Carpenter is virtually unhittable when he gets an extra days rest. As mentioned on VivaElBirdos, in 2006 Carpenter's splits on 5+ days rest were:

0.820 ERA, 0.585 WHIP in 7 starts (including WS)

With the 5 man rotation that LaRussa/Duncan have set, Carp will have an extra days rest for 5 of his first 10 starts.

Posted by: musial6 at March 26, 2007 03:43 PM

Contrary to the allusion of the lead post, Looper doesn't need to strike out many batters to be effective. Frankly, so long as he keeps the ball down in the zone and takes advantage of his infield defense, he'll be fine. That pitching coach Dave Duncan's halmark -- getting guys with decent arms to throw a steady mix of cutters and two-seam fastballs to get bunch of ground ball outs by pitching to contact. Looper's problem has been (and will continue to be) his difficulty with left-handed hitters. As a reliever he was basically a two pitch guy. As a starter, he will have the opportunity to use his breaking ball more to keep lefties off balance. Granted, if he doesn't get any better with lefties his first start against the Mets will likely be brutal; however, lack of K's will not be the reason why.

Posted by: CLFesq at March 27, 2007 12:17 AM
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