3 man starting rotation per game?

Tony Larussa tried it in July 1993. The pitchers didn't like it, mostly because it was wildly unfamiliar, but also because the starter could not qualify for the W if he didn't go five innings. After about ten days, Larussa bailed on it and went back to a more standard style of pitching rotation.

Note also, that A's team didn't really have the pitching talent to make this scheme work.

No, that's never happened, but I've often theorized that you could do better with a situation like that. Most pitchers throw better out of the bull pen (not all, but most), mainly because they only need to master 2 pitches instead of 4 and they don't need to throw as many times before they can go rest.

You figure a season is about 1500 innings, why do most of those innings need to come from starting pitchers? Starters are more valuable than relievers. For the same money and same trade prospects you can get 2-3 good quality relievers for every good quality starter. Why not have 10-12 guys. who can give you an average of 150 good innings in a season (some pitch closer to 200, some closer to 100), rather than 3 guys who can give you 200 good innings and 2 guys who can give you 100 good innings but will go 200 anyway. You can then mix and match when guys are doing better or worse and take them out at the first sign of trouble most of the time. You don't have to worry about guys working through trouble. If you hit trouble, try again the next day.

This plan isn't major league ready, if it fails you've completely killed your pitching for several years. However, I'd like to see some minor league team try it. If nothing else, they'll become a relief pitching farm and a spectacle for local fans, which would be valuable at the minor league level. If it proves successful, a major league team could try it.

That works if you have an all star team with 9 reliable pitcher who can all go for 3 innings each, every third game. No team has that. Plus you'd still need situational relievers who are reliable and that further complicates things.

Also, many starting pitchers need a couple innings to get rolling. Look at Pettitte in game 3 - he was not getting his pitches down in the first 2-3 innings and they were hitting him hard. Then he settled in, got his pitches down in the strike zone as usual and was lights out!

EDIT: First answer has another point - it is unfamiliar to pitchers. Perhaps if we had a generation of pitchers who grew up and trained that way it would work. Maybe we are going there with starters working fewer and fewer innings and more and more specialty relievers.

Warming up to pitch also tires out the pitcher..with a pitcher pitching every 3rd day, they would wear down in a month or less.

Since a team carries 10 or 11 pitchers, problems would occur when the player couldn't get through his 3 innings..you would soon run out of pitchers.

it could backfire tonight with an older pettitte