It’s that time of year again, time when pitchers put their best foot forward trying to impress coaches while coaches make mental notes and the manager consolidates all his information and sketches out a starting rotation for the weeks to come.

Of course, this would be a natural rite of passage if it were Spring Training. But the calendar says June (near on July), not March, and so the news of a midseason pitching-rotation tryout strikes our ears as a bit odd. We’re not sure how LaRuncan will decide who’s in and who’s out. Let’s look at some numbers and conduct a little exercise: identify the following pitchers in order of your preferred rotation (We’ve made THT’s Pitching Runs Created into a rate stat for your convenience.):

Can’t choose*? With most of the pitchers’ PRC/G between two and three, neither could we (for reference, the league’s best pitchers have between four and seven PRC/G). The point is that, once Looper returns, the Cardinals will have six pitchers — and maybe seven, if "G" continues to improve — who are decent but flawed starters. All are capable of pitching multiple solid innings, but none has yet shown an ability to consistently pitch deep into games. Rather than having a "tryout" for a five-man rotation, why not deploy them in a way that naturally suits their abilities and gives them their best chance of success? That is, why not implement the 10-man rotation (aka, starter-by-committee) that we’ve advocated in the past?

To review, the starter-by-committee approach goes like this: Anywhere from eight to 10 pitchers pitch more often but fewer innings per outing. As we wrote back in 2005, a team can therefore:

1. Insert up to three extra hitters into the lineup by pinch-hitting or double-switching for the pitcher when his spot comes up.
2. Optimize the utility of mid-tier starters who lose their effectiveness after one or two times through the order.
3. Gain a platoon advantage sooner than they would if they waited til later in the game to replace the starter.
4. Pitch top-tier starters more frequently than once every five days.
5. Use a 10-man pitching staff, freeing up one or two additional bench spots.

It seems well-suited to teams who:

• Have fewer than two frontline starters but several middling ones
• Are seeking a little extra offense
• Are open to experimentation
• Don’t have much to lose

The Cardinals, if you’ve been following their season, can answer in the affirmative to all the above. So it’s quite unnecessary to conduct some silly midseason audition in an attempt to shoe-horn their pitchers into a traditional five-man rotation. In other words, the Cardinals don’t have to make such a sharp distinction between starter and reliever — they don’t need to press guys into pitching more innings than they should and likewise don’t need to limit guys to short stints out of the bullpen. Rather, give them all anywhere from two to four innings every two to four days. Especially considering the Cardinals’ somewhat unique situation of having so many former (current?) relievers who’ve started this season, their group of pitchers is already conditioned and familiar with pitching more regularly. Throw in Russ Springer (4.18 PRC/G) and Ryan Franklin (5.97), and you’ve got eight currently healthy, solid options for a committee rotation.

Here’s what the schedule until the All-Star break might look like using the pitchers outlined above, plus Isringhausen and Flores to fill in a few innings (innings per game are listed after the pitcher’s name):

So, over a 10-game/10-day period, each pitcher would throw no more than three innings every two-to-three days (not counting Izzy and Flo), and no one would throw more than 11 innings:

And that’s not even including Carpenter or Looper in the picture. Tony La Russa is credited with the mainstreaming of the LOOGy and prides himself on a thinking-man’s approach. Now might just be the time to set a new precedent and reform the starting rotation as we know it.

A Maroth
B Wainwright
C Wellemeyer
D Looper
E Thompson
F Reyes
G Wells

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 11:01 am and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.