The new season has begun and the Loot Squad (The Looters fan club) has shown up in force. In the first series, the Looters drew 113,821 in their sweep of the Orlando Calrissians. That amounts to about 6.8% of the fans that passed through the turnstiles in 2013. The Looters feel that their newly installed retractable roof is already paying dividends. Said the GM, "We can get some wet weather, and some humid weather down here in New Orleans. We made the conscious decision of wanting to avoid rain delays in the future and also to make the game day experience more enjoyable for our fans."
In addition to the sweep of the Calrissian, the Looters got other good news in that reliever Tim Whitehead accepted their free agent offer. Whitehead is familiar with the division as he spent time from 2010-2013 with the Hendersonville Hitmen before moving to Niagara Falls to finish out the 2013 season. Whitehead has a career 2.95 ERA in 259 innings with a 1.20 WHIP. The Looters will count on him to finish solidifying their bullpen. He is expected to need some time to get moved to New Orleans before he will enter the lineup and thus is expected to join the team in mid-April.
Even without Whitehead though, the Looters swept Orlando in 3 exciting games. The first was a pitchers duel as Tyler Law outdueled Rodger Hinton 2-0. Law threw 7 scoreless innings allowing 4 hits with 5 strikeouts. The Looters jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 1st. This scoring started out with two highly anticipated players contributing. Uber-propsect Ramon Hernandez got his first BSA hit with a one out double. Two batters later it was Errol Hughes bringing Hernandez home with a RBI single. The Looters tacked a run on in the 8th with a Jaime Manuel double followed by a single by Jon Love to advance the runner following by newly acquired catcher Hyung-Jin Park hitting a sac fly to bring home Manuel. New closer Gordon Brown came in to shut down the game in the 9th and threw a scoreless frame with 1 hit and 1 K for his first Looter save.
The second game was a bit more dramatic from a different perspective as the Looters held on for a 11-10 win. Every inning except the 8th and 9th had runs in at least one half of the inning. This game featured 7 lead changes and Orlando tying it in the 7th before the Looters scored in the bottom of the 7th to ultimately win the game. The winning set of hits came from Alex Herrejon getting on with a walk. Next up Sandro Cajani moved him to 2nd with a sacrifice. He was ultimately then brought home on a triple by Jaime Manuel. Gordon Brown got his second Looter save in two appearances with another scoreless frame. Kevin Lane and Cameron Rowde took the brunt of most of the scoring for Orlando with a combined 9 runs in 5 innings before other bullpen members shut down the scoring.
The third game was also a higher scoring affair with the Looters on top 8-5. All the Looter runs came in the 3rd and 4th innings exploding for 3 and 5 runs respectively. Youngster Ramon Hernandez had another great game going 2 for 4 driving in 5 runs including his first BSA Grand Slam in the 4th on a 3-1 pitch that was served up down the middle for a death blow to Orlando. Ricardo Gomes pitched effectively managing the scoring going 7 innings allowing 5 runs on 6 hits with 8 Ks. With Gordon Brown unavailable, Doug Meeligan was brought on for the save pitching a scoreless frame.
After their great start, the Looters hoped to take that success into Hendersonville, but were stymied losing the games 13-5 and 6-2. Bill Maddox blew up in the first game giving up 8 runs in 1.2 innings allowing every runner to score (6 hits, 2 walks). From a hitting perspective Jaime Manuel did a good job with a 3 for 4 game knocking home 2 falling short of a cycle by a homer. Game 5 featured Carlos "CarGo" Gonzalez where he gave up 5 runs in 3 innings. The big news from this game featured Ramon Hernandez getting hurt day to day for 1-2 weeks with a 24% performance loss. That ended a good game by him where he was 3 for 3.
Expectations Watch
Based on the results of the opening games, the Looters feel they have stolen 1 game beyond expectations. Based off preseason BNN predictions, the Looters were expected to win 74 games. Using the weights there, the Looters were expected to win 1.7 of the 3 games vs Orlando. In the 4 game series vs Hendersonville, the Looters are expected to take just under 1 of 4 games, so if they win one of the 2 remaining games, they'll still be on track 1 game ahead.
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