I don’t mean using a 4-man starting pitching rotation situationally, as in stretch runs or in covering someone’s time on the DL. I mean a team that named four guys on Opening Day and more or less stuck with a 4-man system wire to wire (allowing for injury replacements to any of the starters 1 through 4).
Depends on what you mean. Even when a four-man rotation was the norm, most teams had a “spot starter,” who would start doubleheaders and when the schedule required it. And a bad team would often go through quite a few starting pitchers in the course of a season trying to find someone who could get people out.
I know that in the 70s, a four-man rotation was the norm, but by the 1980s it had switched to five-man.
Moved to the Game Room from GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
The 1985 Braves are probably the best answer to this question. They tried to use the old 4 man and a spot starter rotation. Note that Mahler & Bedrosian both made more starts than any would today.
Their starters and starts:
SP Rick Mahler 39
SP Steve Bedrosian 37
SP Pascual Perez 22
SP Len Barker 18
SP Joe Johnson 14
There was a little bit of a stir about 5 years ago when the Blue Jays said they were going to do so. As I recall, the pitchers themselves kept management from going through with it. The Rockies then sort of half-assedly experimented with it the next year.