MIAMI BEACH — With his team drifting out of the division race because of chronic problems with its starting rotation, manager Tony La Russa and his pitching coach Dave Duncan chose to try a radical experiment with their pitchers.

They ditched the traditional five-man rotation to rescue their season.

That was 14 years ago this week.

But it could very well fit this year, too.

With the Oakland Athletics in 1993, La Russa was leading a sixth-place team with the league’s second-worst ERA (5.03). Pitching was pegged as the primary glitch, so La Russa and Duncan decided to try something they had only theorized about — a three-day, nine-man rotation. On July 19, 1993, La Russa announced the move to the media, asking rhetorically: “What have we got to lose?”

Fast-forward 14 years and the Cardinals are a third-place team with pitching issues and the second-worst ERA in the league (4.75).

“Different circumstances,” Duncan said recently when I asked if this year’s Cardinals staff could benefit from some, um, non-traditional thinking. “We were looking for something that gave us a chance to win. And we felt that it did at the time.”

The Cardinals expect to find out today what the immediate future holds for ace Chris Carpenter and his wonky elbow. On Monday, trainer Barry Weinberg said today’s check up with the team doctor is to develop “a course of action” to combat the recurring swelling in Carpenter’s right elbow. The Cardinals are now bracing themselves for news that Mark Mulder will return to the rotation before Carpenter. How close is Mulder? He’ll throw a bullpen session today at Dolphin Stadium, though his schedule does not yet include throwing to batters. Absence,  including Todd Wellemeyer’s,  is only part of the pitching equation for the Cardinals.

The rotation, as it stands now, features three pitchers who have pitched well recently, including tonight’s starter Brad Thompson. Adam Wainwright and Braden Looper are bona fide starters, especially after their performances the last two nights, and Mike Maroth has a track record. With Kip Wells’ ongoing struggles, the Cardinals truly have four starters to count on and  Thompson remains valuable to the bullpen when he’s available. But even at their best the rotation hasn’t been able to string together enough quality starts to get the team on a winning streak.

If their division title asperations are more than apparitions the Cardinals are going to need a few lengthy winning streaks. And fast.

It is with all these pitching problems as a backdrop that I received this email:

#1. I like that your name is spelled the same as the great Derrick Chievous. #2. Another emailer asked you about the Cards using a piggyback rotation.   I seem to remember La Russa and Duncan using this with Oakland in the early-mid 90’s in Oakland for a few weeks.     They had three guys set to go three innings every few days. Didn’t work real well, but they did it.

– Dave Newman, Sacramento, Calif.

Well, No. 1, thanks. Credit my parents. I believe they liked the name but were thinking ahead and wanted to pick a spelling that would get through spell-check, seeing as how “derrick” is in the dictionary. No. 2 got my wheels turning. I didn’t remember the details either, by Mr. Newman came through with some additional resource and a quick flip through the newspaper morgue added additional details.

On July 19th, 1993, La Russa and Duncan’s A’s debuted the group-pitch rotation.

While not exactly like the piggyback rotation the Cardinals minor-league teams used — some are still using — this season, the A’s group-think is a cousin. La Russa and Duncan carved up the staff into three groups of three pitchers. The pitching trios:

Group 1: Todd Van Poppel, Ron Darling, Kelly Downs.

Group 2: Mike Mohler, Bobby Witt, John Briscoe.

Group 3: Bob Welch, Shawn Hillegas, Goose Gossage.  

“I have never thought about something like this,” said Darling at the time. “But I am not one of the  great baseball thinkers of all time.”  

The move left the  A’s with four relievers, including closer Dennis Eckersley, each designated for a specific role.  It also deleted a spot from the bench. Originally, the starters were going alternate starts, because the  idea wasn’t get the guy who could go the longest  into the game the earliest. Duncan and La Russa wanted to  get each pitcher the equivalent of three innings. Each member of the trio would throw between 40 and 60 pitches.

Duncan said at the time that it was something he and La Russa discussed would best be applied to an expansion team (Florida and Colorado — bringing  the majors  to the Time Zone Baseball Forgot — joined the National League that season). La Russa explained the move to  reporters:

”It has some pluses, and it has some problems. But you never know until you try it. One obvious problem is that it penalizes the starting pitcher. In most cases, the starting pitcher won’t be able to get a win, either because we won’t get the lead or he won’t pitch long enough.

“One of the pluses is that by pitching more frequently, the pitchers will probably stay sharper. And it will give the other side a lot of different looks in the same game. When Witt was sick the other day and we had to use that group of (four) emergency pitchers, some of (the Cleveland) hitters were saying how much trouble they had seeing a different pitcher each time. . . . But above all, I think it just improves our chances to win.”

It didn’t.

The  experiment didn’t last long, only a week. The A’s lost five of the next six games, four of the five with the  pitching trios . Although the  pitchers produced a 4.60 ERA, Mr. Newman calculated. Better but not  better enough. The A’s slipped to 14 games under .500. The three-day rotation went the way of the No. 8-hitting pitcher.

“It worked alright,” Duncan said  recently.  The pitchers “didn’t like it because there was always the one guy who started the game and he was in a position where all he could do was get a loss.  … Probably what it did more than anything was get the guys who were pitching more aggressive. When  you had limited pitch counts, they really pitched more aggressively, threw a lot more strikes.”

Now that sounds familiar.

The Cardinals  have lauded what Wells has done out of the bullpen because it’s been different than how he’s pitched when he starts. He’s been, in his words, more aggressive.  When it was possible, La Russa also liked to get Thompson a  between-start relief appearance.  There is a general belief that a sinkerball pitcher, like Thompson, benefits from having a slightly tired arm to add more sink, less mph  to his best pitch. When given that relief appearance, Thompson has been — say it with me now — more aggressive.

Could a twist on the group rotation be that far away for the Cardinals?

The Cardinals, arguably, have the ingredients for a hybrid of the traditional rotation and the A’s attempt. In fact, they’ve been forced to employ some of its elements already. Consider there are four relievers assigned to specific roles: Closer Jason Isringhausen, setup reliever Ryan Franklin, lefty Randy Flores and righthander Russ Springer. If you pool the remaining pitchers into groups that can combine for six innings, a modified A’s attempt appears:

Group 1: Adam Wainwright, Troy Percival*

Group 2: Braden Looper, Andy Cavazos*

Group 3: Mike Maroth, Kip Wells

Group 4: Brad Thompson, Troy Cate

(* Flex relievers, who could go on either day.)

Cate’s presence in the bullpen gives the Cardinals a look of a team already flirting with a non-traditional rotation, especially when Wells’ starts have become shorter as his relief appearances got better. Cate has bounced from rotation to bullpen in Triple-A all season. Duncan views him as an innings-eater and he could be one thud by another starter away from his first major-league start.

The leap of faith here would be shifting to a four-day rotation and what that would do to Wainwright and Looper who are — have been — thriving in the  more practical rotation. The wear on the arms of two pitchers who spent last year (at least) in the bullpen would require some tinkering to the above outline. Keeping the healthy pitchers healthy is the priority. The Cardinals would also have to consider adding an additional pitcher, something that would strain an NL bench. Not to mention several of the pitchers would have to suspend the (misplaced) importance placed on wins.

But some modification is already happening.

You’ll recall way back during the winter that this blog made a modest proposal for a four-man rotation and Duncan responded to that argument a few days later.  (And a month later a national publication chimed in, right down to a familiar headline …)  

When La Russa announced that the A’s experiment was over and they were going to shift back to the traditional five-man rotation he gave an explanation that didn’t kill the idea. He said it would work “in the right place at the right time.” This may not be the right place and the Cardinals may not have the right pitchers.

But as the Cardinals get news on Carpenter, get a feel for Mulder, continue to grope for reliable starting pitching every other day, and try not to sink any deeper below .500, this might be the right time.

What have they got to lose?

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