fundamentals are what won the game

[mcgee51taguchi99]

Sending him was not ridiculous. I don't think we had any other choice. We had to take a chance there. We had no bench guys left and obviously Oquendo thought Bay wasn't expecting to have to throw home. I thought it was a great call by Oquendo and was screaming "send em send em" even before he sent him.

I'll take batter at the dish with the bases loaded and 2 outs who

1) hits for contact and does not strikeout often
2) regularly works the count, therefore increasing the amount of pitches (and the chance for a wild pitch or passed ball)
3) might draw a walk

before Bennett going home on that play. It took a terrible throw by Bay and the catcher dropping the ball after the tag for it to work. Having no other choice is a pitcher on deck with no other bench players available.

You can't really say Wilson himself screwed up the sacrifice, because you don't know what his instructions were. If he was under instruction to bunt no matter what, then hang it on Tracy. If, he was given the freedom to pull the bunt back and punch the ball through then he should have done that.

There was almost zero chance that a sacrifice bunt was going to work based on how the Cards played it. They completely took it away.

Yep I hear ya, didn't consider it was a bunt all the way. In any case whether it's the player or the coach, it was an unsound strategy.

[jim]

The way the Cards are hitting, I never even gave a second thought to sending him. A minute later, the phone rings, and it's M1IRONMIK. Not hello, not how ya' doin, but "What in the hell is Oquendo doing?". I paused for a minute, because I hadn't considered it. Mike knows his baseball, so I chewed it over for a minute and decided I probably still wasn't ready to hang Oquendo out to dry. But I think you can easily make an argument that it probably was not a smart play by Oquendo.