I believe there was some evidence that that might have been the case when they did that with Renaudo a couple of weeks ago. At least it seemed that way with some of the guys. It is when you have a 6 man rotation and an off day involved which really tends to mess them up.
It seems like when they kept Lee pitching every 5 days and worked everyone around him that some of the other guys suffered, but I could be wrong. That would be even worse in a 6 man rotation I would think. It is hard to say just what the effects will be since it is rarely used, but there just seems to be some potentially bad side effects from it if used for any extended period of time. I would think there has been reasons why teams try it and then shelve the idea soon thereafter.
Thompson still has 55.2 innings before he matches last year's total. Eickhoff still has 67.2 innings before he matches last year's total. If they do decide to shut Chi Chi down that gives them plenty of time to limit Thompson and/or Eickoff in the minors to prepare them to be able to come up in September. That is something they can map out as early as a month from now if they felt they needed to do so.
