Baseball Yakker

Many minor league baseball teams, including some in the St. Louis Cardinals’ organization, have experimented with a system known as a “piggyback rotation”. In this rotation, there can be as many as 10 starting pitchers on a single roster, and on any given day, two of them will pitch up to 4 innings each.

However, such a pitching rotation hasn’t caught on in the major leagues, perhaps because many of the experiments in the minors failed. Nevertheless, St. Louis used something similar on Monday, but it’s safe to say the Cardinals won’t be permanently piggybacking any time soon, partly because it didn’t work out so great.

St. Louis was somewhat puzzled on who to start on Monday. P.J. Walters and Blake Hawksworth were the two main candidates to take on the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Both spent the same amount of time on the mound, and in result, had nearly identical stats.

Hawksworth was officially named the started, but he lasted only 4 frames before Walter was placed in the game. Walters too pitched 4 innings, completing the 8th inning. However, no Cardinals hurler pitched the 9th, because there was no need. St. Louis had already lost at that point by a score of 12-4.

Walters may not have earned the start, but it remains just as well, since Hawksworth was pinned with the loss, his 3rd of the season. But it wasn’t because Hawksworth did any worse. In fact, the two Cardinals had eerily similar pitching lines, both rather unimpressive.

Hawksworth pitched 4 innings, as did Walters. He also surrendered 7 hits and issued 3 walks, the exact same as Walters. The similarities continue as Hawksworth’s total of 6 runs allowed match up identically to Walter’s. Both even received run support from Ryan Ludwick, who hit a solo homerun during each of the two pitcher’s time on the mound.

But Ludwick was only part of the Cardinals 4 runs. In the 7th, Felipe Lopez singled home a pair of runs following Ludwick’s second dinger of day. Each finished with two RBIs each, plus together they had 4 of St. Louis’ 7 hits.

The loss for the Cardinals is their 25′ of the year, but they remain tied for first in the NL Central. Expect St. Louis to receive a more traditional start on Tuesday when Chris Carpenter take the hill, where he will commence his dominance over the Dodgers at 9:10 CT.

Categories: MLB
Tags: Features