Not much else to say when your team does this:
The Dodgers had the bases loaded with no outs in the top of the seventh inning trailing the St. Louis Cardinals 6-5 at Busch Stadium on Tuesday night and the inning ended like this:
Despite a valiant comeback effort and yet another four-hit game by Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman that included a ninth-inning solo home run, the Dodgers lost to the Red Birds by a score of 7-6 because of their failure to score ‘With ducks on the pond’ (as they say) in that seventh inning.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better situation,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said postgame. “We just gotta execute right there. It just didn’t happen.”
No, you couldn’t have, and no, it did not.
Not much else to say.
Play Ball!
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Why not let Trayce bat against a struggling pitcher? Instead we pinch hit with a .160 hitter with another lefty on the bench who is hitting .300. Muncy is toast. Time to sit him and bring up Vargas and see what he can do. Surely there were better options than Price in the 8th. Price is a mop up guy at best. This loss is squarely on Roberts. Totally mismanaged another game.
I always mute the TV and listen to the radio broadcasts of the games – not only because my OCD can’t handle the 15-second delay on the television broadcasts, but because I am – and always have been – a HUGE Rick Monday fan (we’ve also become good friends). Rick never pulls any punches and was (appropriately) critical of Roberts for that exactly same thing; and the fact that it took FIVE consecutive Cardinals batters to reach base in the fourth inning before the first mound visit.
Rick suggested having scheduled batter Hanser Alberto stand in the on-deck circle and even be announced to see see if Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol was going to remove Junior Fernández anyway (which he probably would have). If so, THEN have Muncy announced as the pinch-hitter, thereby forcing Marmol to either have his new reliever pitch to Muncy or burn another reliever if he still wanted the lefty-lefty match-up with Muncy.
Did I mention that I am a HUGE Rick Monday fan?