Quote:
Originally Posted by BigRedChief
I think Ollie has done a good job this year. You forgot more about Baseball in the last week than I know total.
But, I still think if you have an injured pitcher this week with his pitching hand. Then he loses it and can’t throw a strike. You have to think it’s related and pull him regardless if you don’t have better choices.
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Sure. But when did he 'lose it'?
I think we're talking maybe a 1 batter difference. He got Hoskins for the first out. Realmuto hit a decent slider at the knees - no warning signs. Harper drew a walk off two really good takes after he throws a nasty 1-0 curve and then dots the black at 102 to get a swinging strike and take him to 1-2.
Suddenly he throws a 5 pitch walk to Castellanos that took like...a minute. Can you argue he should've had someone warm? Sure, I suppose. But remember how pissed off folks used to get at LaRussa for 'dry humping' relievers? You gotta be careful there as well.
When he pitches as well as he did in the 8th and then got the first batter of the 9th, what's your justification for getting someone warmed?
You can get them loose; have them soft-tossing. But 'getting loose' and getting warm are two different animals. You can have them out there getting loose but to 'get warm' means making high effort pitches from the mound. But even that's gonna take more than 1 batter to get them lathered and in the game. I mean there are a very select few that could do it faster than that (Steve Klein, for instance), but most take 10-12 pitches and that's gonna be a couple of batters.
The wheels just came off too damn fast.