2 Tony La Russa innovations that caught on and 1 he'd like to forget

3. Pitchers batting eighth

For all of La Russa's genius, not everything he tried turned to gold. In 1998, he made a lineup decision that hadn't been attempted since 1979: He placed the pitcher eighth in the batting order. All previous iterations of managers batting pitchers outside the nine hole were somewhat short-lived, but La Russa persevered with the idea, batting the pitcher eighth in the final 77 games of the season.

La Russa justified his decision by saying that having a legitimate hitter rounding out the order would give the Cardinals a better chance to score runs by having an extra player on base before the big boppers of Ray Lankford, Mark McGwire and Brian Jordan. The effect was negligible: With the pitcher batting ninth, the Cardinals scored an average of 4.98 runs per game. When the pitcher hit eighth, they scored an average of 4.96 runs per game.

The experiment looked to be over until 2007, when La Russa came roaring back with the idea. That year, he hit the pitcher in the eighth spot 116 times, as he treated Albert Pujols, who hit third in the order, as a cleanup hitter in the vein of McGwire. 2008 saw the high watermark of this strategy, as La Russa hit the pitcher eighth in every game of the season aside from games where the team played in American League ballparks and used the designated hitter. He eased off of the idea in 2009, hitting pitchers in the penultimate spot 55 times, then doing it 77 times in 2010 and only 14 in 2011.

It appeared that pitchers hitting eighth might become a trend in 2015, when Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon revived the strategy and hit the pitcher in the spot for 150 games. Maddon continued to toy with the concept, using it in intervals of his next four seasons as the Cubs manager.

However, hitting the pitcher eighth never became a mainstream idea, and statistics showed that there was little difference in results when they hit in that position instead of ninth. With the designated hitter now universal across baseball, La Russa's strategy has no chance to make a rebound.

La Russa's innovative ideas became a signature trait of his managerial tenure. Though not everything caught on, he has left an indelible mark on the game and was a major factor of the Cardinals' extended run of success in the 2000s.