Has Brooklyn Conquered the Cyclone of Injuries?
(A familiar sight this season in Brooklyn)
When the Brooklyn Robins announced that they were going to disassociate themselves from a traditional pitching staff and use what they like to call "The Cyclone", pundits around the league silently chuckled to themselves wondering how this was going to turn out. It could be groundbreaking. It could equally be a train wreck. Early results show both.
The Robins are currently 4th in the Johnson league in ERA. Just .003 behind 3rd place Rockville. This is actually pretty unbelievable when given the scope of things. Brooklyn pitchers have spent 537 days on the disabled list this season. There has literally been at least 5 regular pitchers on the DL every sim since April. Not just the crappy ones either. It's been a solid mix of all stars and replacement fodder who have hit the DL.
So what has been the cause of all these inuries? Well, injuries around the league are up at a record pace. So we could use that as an excuse. But being that the Robins have had an ungodly amount of injuries relagated almost solely to non injury prone pitchers, it probably has more to do with the way we were using pitchers. About halfway through the season, Brooklyn abondoned the Cyclone and went back to a normal rotation.
So this is the end of the Cyclone right? Well, what had happened was... Brooklyn went cold and had two of the worst months in franchise history. Somethng had to be done. So they made a trade for two more pitchers(Frank/Cherono) who personified what a pitcher in this system should look like. Then they revamped the system a bit.
See, in the original format. The Robins would pick a starter based on who they thought would pitch well that day. But apparently the front office didn't communicate this well with manager Tom Valdez and he would often pitch the next days starter at will. This created a lot of situations where tired pitchers would take the mound. The exact opposite of the strategy laid out.
So about a month ago the Robins front office stopped telling Valdez who should start. They simply run the team with a one man rotation and leave that spot empty. The results have been .600 baseball. And this is still without their 1A Starter(Ruiz), 4 and 5 starters(Romano/Bates), long man(Cherono) and closer(Akiyama).
The good news is that this altering of the strategy seems to be working. There have been far less injuries over this time and in fact, everone will be back in a week and a half and we may finally get to see what this unit is capable of. Below is a list of what the staff looks like. More then anything, because I've never seen all these names in one place before.
Stoppers
Ryosei Akiyama (13/5/7 Ratings)
Jorge Perez (11/7/8 Ratings)
Bernard Keller (11/5/7 Ratings)
High Leverage Bulk
Mauro Flores (12/7/8 Ratings)
Francisco Ruiz (12/7/6 Ratings)
Manuel Andres (12/7/5 Ratings)
Jonathan Frank (9/7/7 Ratings)
Low Leverage Bulk
Manuel Romano (10/7/5 Ratings)
Ken Bates (10/6/7 Ratings)
Kidanu Cherono (9/7/6 Ratings)
Juan Jose Fuentes (9/7/6 Ratings)
Takeo Aoki (9/6/5 Ratings)
Ingo Bennaars (9/5/5 Ratings)
Roberto Sanchez (8/5/9 Ratings)
Specialists
Oginga Coujoe (8/7/7 Ratings)
Robert Hansen (7/8/7 Ratings)
Leonardo Montes (13/6/2 Ratings)
Ramon Vasquez (9/7/5 Ratings)
Obviously some cuts, demotions, trades will need to occur for the 2037 season. But this should be a pretty sick September staff.... if they can stay healthy.
