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I went back and looked at the play by play for the sixth inning. It baffles me. My understanding is that Dohm and KC were ready in the pen, as they should have been.
I understand running Gartman back out there as he was competing but it has to be with a short leash at that point in the game.
After Austin gets on with the infield single, Lemonis should have put the fire out before it started with a quality bat like Maldonado at the plate. He didn?t- they get a 2 run HR.
At that point he should have said ok, shame on me, I screwed up, and pulled Gartman to limit the damage. He didn?t. Nolan doubles.
How you don?t make a move at that point is beyond me. Credit Gartman as he digs deep and gets two outs. That takes a lot of mental and physical toughness when he?s already thrown a lot of pitches.
Then you get to the top of the order with Bradfield who is always a tough out with a runner on third. Surely at this point, any previous reasoning to not go to the pen is out the window. But no, Lemonis is stubborn and leaves Gartman out there, Bradfield does what he does best, gets a base hit. Run scores.
It?s now 6-1, but it?s college baseball, we?ve got good bats. The game isn?t 100% out of hand. The bullpen guys are probably just watching at this point wondering if Lemonis and Foxhall both took restroom break at the same time as nothing else explains this inning. They get to watch Diaz hit a bomb into the Lounge. This is the nail in the coffin, ironically for both the game and for Gartman.
Now Lemonis makes the move and KC gets mop up duty.
If this was a once off head scratcher I can write it off. But I?ve seen this happen repeatedly since this staff has been here. We won games despite bad pitching moves in 2019 and 2021. We had the arms to overcome poor game management then. We don?t now.
