Joe Maddon has batted his pitcher in the eighth hole in every game this season, his first at the helm of the Chicago Cubs.

The idea of moving the pitcher up the order first came to Maddon in August of 2013 when he was still with the Tampa Bay Rays. They were in Los Angeles to play the Dodgers under National League rules and he found himself temped to try it.

"So I called Tony La Russa and asked him why he did it," Maddon recalls. "I just needed to know more. I mean, I had my ideas, but I wanted to hear what he had to say."

Heading into this season, of the 619 occasions in the last 50 years in which a pitcher had batted eighth, 432 of them were in a Tony La Russa lineup.

Maddon has stuck with the idea, but not everyone is sold.

"If it worked, everyone would do it," says one longtime big league coach. "But only a small percentage of guys do it. So obviously, we haven't seen anything yet that says that's the way to go."