Fair warning before u read this: THIS IS A CRACKPOT THEORY/?

[ARN]

Zach Jackson and Carlos Villanueva will alternate as the Brewers' fifth starter for the time being.

Jackson is a lefty and Villanueva is a righty so manager Ned Yost said he will start whichever pitcher matches up better with the team they are playing. The next time either will start is Sunday against Kansas City. Yost hasn't announced who will get the start.

so i was reading this from rotoworld and i started to wonder if this was the wave of the future for rotations (not saying its starting now, just wondering if at some point it will start). same idea as what happend back in the 2001 playoff in how the Diamondbacks used either Anderson or Batista on days the Unit and Schilling werent starting. (though if used in regular season Schilling and Johnson would need regular rest rather than the 2 days or so they got in playoffs). will a time come when a team will have top 3 starters and the other 2 spots will rotate between 3 or 4 guys depending on who matches up best? Any thoughts? (telling me im dumb and to shut up is acceptable, im used to it)

For instance the brewers rotation (healthy) could look like this...

SP#1 sheets
SP#2 Capuano
SP#3 Davis
SP#4 Bush (@home) Helling or Villanueva(on the road)
SP#5 jackson (@home) Ohka (on the road)

(just a quick example glancing at the splits, if used in reallife many more numbers would be used so my above example probably isnt correct)

[TheYanks04]

I hope not as it is pretty ridiculous to have pitching so bad that you are afraid to pitch a guy on the orad or at home or whatever. Either a pitcher is good enough for the Majors or he isn't imo.

[Snakes Gould]

well rotating 2 guys in 1 spot seems fine to me. if a team really MASHES lefties, you dont want to throw a lefty up there. and completely opposite, some teams cannot hit lefties a lick, so throwing a lefty out there would certainly be a huge advantage. the home/road thing i say no.

[johnsamo]

Kind of a waste of two pitchers for on every fifth game roster slot. I assume the guy not slated to start that next game would be available in the bullpen occassionally then.

[johnsamo]

It's really a strategy born from weakness it sounds like. It's like saying, we don't have a good fifth starter, so I'll just throw whoever matches up better on paper. Not exactly a confidence builder for the pitchers involved, and confidence is half the game.

[Havok1517]

Its really only a 4 man rotation with a spot starter (picking the 1 with the better ratios). A lot of teams do this to start the year off, during injury periods (I know the Mets did it this year and I think the Red Sox did too), or during the playoffs. Its not that foreign of an idea. They used to do it a lot when 5 man rotations were considered unnecessary. Of course this was when baseball was far less specialized.

[AcidRock23]

I think that pitchers have to pitch more regularly than that to be effective. John Smoltz' request to move back to starting would be the example that jumps out at me.

It might have some potential theoretically but then one guy gets hot for a while b/c he stops eating so many donuts or something non-baseball related and gets hot, do you stick w/ the plan or put the hot guy in? Look at how dismal the Cubs have performed w/ the casualties and the haphazard manner they have been running guys in from Iowa to pitch a couple of games and get shelled and sent back for the next victim. Guys like that don't meet whatever projections, even grim ones, b/c they don't know what they are doing b/c they are closing one day and starting vs. St. Louis a week later. I realize Glendon Rusch is not a breathtaking talent but he's underperformed most projections by a pretty significant margin.