It is actually a very interesting question of whether the advantages of the old Earl Weaver style platooning would outweigh the advantages of pitching in short windows, what we could call the Tampa bay style. If you’re going to platoon at four or five positions you have to have 15 of 16 position players on your 25-man roster. If you’re going to move pitchers in and out of the game to throw 25 pitches each you have to have 12 or 13 pitchers. It’s one or the other.
There are theoretically measurable advantages to each approach. A pitcher is measurably more effective when used in a short window, but a hitter is also measurably more effective when used with the platoon advantage, and platooning enables the manager to get better offensive production out or more or less replacement-level performers. It is actually not clear which set of advantages is larger. Working it out is a tremendously complicated math problem requiring sets of assumptions which no one has taken the time and trouble to create.
And it matters, because it determines the ultimate path forward for the game. Weaver relied on defensive excellence to keep his starting pitchers in the game; he was getting almost 7 innings a game out of his starters. There is no REAL evidence, in my view, that this approach is not as workable now as it was 40 years ago. We have just chosen to focus on the other set of advantages, but the fact that almost everybody has chosen to do that is not actual evidence that that set of advantages is larger; it is merely evidence that most people currently BELIEVE that that set of advantages is larger. It would be extremely interesting to see if a team which was short of resources could build a competitive team, as the Baltimore Orioles did, by building a four-man rotation of pitchers pitching 250 innings, outstanding defensive players in the infield and center field, and platooning at catcher/first base/left field/right field. I am 0% convinced that that approach is not workable.