Just what is Omaha’s “Stopper Rotation”?(42.20)

[niles08]

Much of Omaha’s success this season has been because of the well-documented change in not only the entire pitching staff’s ERA compared to last year, but hell even compared to just this past May. I won’t go back into how well the entire pitching staff has been since then, however one of the things that appear to be working and implemented by the Hawks first-year pitching coach Craig Brown is what he is calling a “Stopper Rotation”.

It’s basically just as it sounds. Every team has a starting rotation, which is expected to more often than not get into the 6th inning of games, well that’s where Brown’s “Stopper Rotation” comes into play.

The trio of Tony Medine, Norio Hayashi, and now Thomas Rodriguez are the rotation’s inaugural members and early indications are that it is working. Since the “creation” of this move, the club is 25-18 compared to 25-29 beforehand.

The club also has stopped blowing saves which is obviously an important issue. Raul Luna was responsible for 10 blown saves and 6 losses. He has 17 saves so essentially he was losing the lead or giving the other team a victory 50% of the time he was placed into that opportunity. 16 wins would go a long way for the club pushing them from 50 wins to 67, only 3 behind Louisville.

Anyhow, the trio for the stopper rotation all are currently holding ERA’s under 2.50 and despite starting this just a few months back, have enough innings pitched(except Rodriguez) to say that this is a no longer small sample size.

Hayashi has thrown 69 innings and Medine has thrown 48.

While the other members of the bullpen have not said much about this new rotation, one can't imagine they are happy with the lack of work as the rest of the bullpen has only thrown a total of 10 innings during the month of July.

This entire thing could be a coincidence and could end tomorrow but there is no fun in that. We're all about fun so as Hawk enthusiasts we will move forward assuming this move is the reason the team is doing well currently.

[recte44]

Sounds like you have just renamed Recte’s Rule of Three. ™

[RonCo]

Rule of Four works even better.