24 and Oosterom
Journeyman relief pitcher on pace for 24-0 season
Have you even heard of Timo van Oosterom? Probably not. He's been a journeyman pitcher who has been around for a bit. Drafted back in 2023 by the Montreal Blazers, TImo never made any top prospect lists or was involved in any mega trades. After spending 7 seasons in the minor leagues, he was called up in 2029 and became a semi regular in the Blazers pen for the next 5 seasons. He was then claimed on waivers by the Valencia Stars. After a brief stop there, he returned to Montreal as a minor league free agent. Finally he ended up in Brooklyn on a minor league deal.
Stationed in San Francisco, van Oosterom has been the beneficiary of a unique pitching scheme. The Robins, of course, are long believers in maximizing relief pitchers. At the minor league level they use a six man rotation and limit starters to 60 pitches(with the lone exception of Tavio who we hope one day actually hits his 250 pitch threshold for folk lore). The motive is that we want to balance out the innings pitched fairly equally between SP and RP.
The caveat to this strategy is that SP often fall short of the 5 innings required to pick up a victory via the archaic win stat. If they are behind they get the loss, but if ahead won't qualify for the win. Long relievers then enter the game and often scoop up cheap victories. van Oosterom is one such fellow.
His current 15-0 record is not really all that unique to the system. Butcher Turner is 15-5, Damian Ramirez and Anibal Vazquez are both 11-1 while Orlando Zuniga is 7-0 in just 16 games. It's just a quirky byproduct of our developmental program.
Over his past 5 seasons in AAA, van Oosterom has accumulated an eye popping(see baby above) 43-5 record. So will he do it? The current Rupert Horn record for wins stands at exactly 24. The same pace that the 33 year old Belgian is on. Only time will tell.