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For DinDin, I barfed up half a pastrami and egg sandwich, French fries, and a cup of Earl Gray tea, the moment Gallegos forgot to break for 1B on the ground ball to Goldy.
Just an inexcusable loss. You can’t bonehead like that in the top 9th after you took a 2-0 lead in the 8th. You have all the momentum unless you just find a way to stupid it up like we did.
This is a team we need to beat and we figured out a way to lose. Now I bet we lose this series.
Realistically, this was not a game the Cards would have been expected to win. It still stinks that they blew it at the end.
That ninth inning felt like IU Basketball last season. Get a decent lead and momentum… only to choke and lose at the end of the game.
It seems that Nolan’s overthrow to first may have started the decline.
Talk about bad news bear type of an inninng…how clueless does the P have to be to not cover first on a ball hit that way….utterly stupid….to many things wrong with this team to be anymore than a .500 team and it really starting to show.
Yes, the game would have been over if Nolan made the throw. The Cardinals strength is defense but it wasn’t there when they needed it in a big game.
Gallegos doesn’t have a closer’s mentality. As others have mentioned he doesn’t attack hitters and when baserunners get on in high pressure situations he can’t handle himself. You have to pitch and be able to field your position. I’m gonna take a cheap shot but give him some pine tar and he pitches very well.
Loved Marmol’s press conference. I think we finally have a manager with a decent mindset. Doesn’t silver line, tells it like it is, and doesn’t dumb down the fans. Can’t wait to see him handle the bullpen in the future.
I usually snap back quickly from these demoralizing setbacks, but this one is stubbornly hanging on. And the peculiar thing is that I don’t blame the catalyst for this debacle….. Arenado. The game doesn’t even get to the terrible Gallegos gaffe if Arenado just does what he does 99% of the time…..make the routine throw to 1st base a successful one. But Gallegos is the guy who really gets my goat here. His mental errors (yes there were two) on this play were so blatantly inexcusable, that you just want to scream. But, maybe it’s better for his psychological baseball flaws to be exposed now rather than during a crucial playoff game. There’s no doubt that Gallegos can pitch. But not in the role as the team’s closer. Our Cardinals need a closer who understands and executed his duties with both competency and attitude. When our closer is looking in at the batter in the box, I want to see that look on his face that this batter owes him money…..and a lot of it.
One of those “gut punch” games you look back on and think “that game in April really hurts.
I think we see Helsley in the closers role before long. He has that look of the classic modern era closer right now.
Arenado makes that play 19 times out of 20. We just got to number 20. He seemed to panic a bit on it – took too many steps thinking he had to make a perfect throw, rather than just let his ability take over.
Real tough. A much smaller stage of game 7, 1968 type of feel to that one.
Arenado’s play was difficult but we are used to him making it. It was a tough error though. Gallegos not covering first is inexcusable, especially after Goldy made a brilliant play to stop the ball on a nasty hop. It was evident after the first couple of batters that Gallegos wasn’t fooling anyone. The Mets were hitting lasers all over the field. I expect Gio to bounce back though. We have seen him blow the occasional game before only to bounce back and be tough as nails.
Of course McFarland coming in to immediately throw gasoline on the fire didn’t help matters.
All the games count, but as has been mentioned, it is better to have this kind of gut punch in April than in September or October.
Arenado took five or six steps between fielding the ball and throwing it. I wonder if it got stuck in his glove. Putting the fielding aside, the error was deserved because he threw the ball over Goldy’s head. The throw still would have been in time had it been accurate.
Having said that, over the long haul, Arenado will win many more games than he costs his team.
Mr. Perkins asked:
Can you give a summary of the Marmol press conference?
Go to Bally Sports Midwest’s website and you can watch it. They usually load the post-game manager interview.
https://www.ballysports.com/watch/vod/marmol-on-gallegos-not-covering-first-can-t-excuse-it
FWIW, I thought Marmol was very sedate, though he did say that he “can’t excuse” Gio not getting over to cover first.
It takes a lot to get me to turn off a Cardinal’s game. I just had to switch to another channel for this one before I blew a gasket. Completely wasted another Mikolas dandy. GRRRRR
ps. Met’s commentator Ron Darling put the kabash on the Cards. He kept praising their defense until their D coughed up the game.
And it just wasn’t Gallegos not getting over to the bag in a timely manner, but then he doesn’t have the wherewithal to quickly turn around towards the plate. I still am having great difficulty that he allowed the runner from 2nd base to score on an infield play such as this. That’s little league stuff….. that’s something you’d see see during the first part of the “Bad News Bears” movie, before the team got it’s act together.
yuck… but in fairness to GG I would have been gawking at Goldy’s play too…it was pretty phenomenal in it’s own right
Arenado had trouble getting the ball out of his glove and had to rush the throw. It happens. Rarely with him, but it happens.
Indeed Cranny. That’s why in my heart, a minute after the play, I couldn’t stay mad at Arenado. It’s GG who reached deep down into the throat of wondrous victory and snatched it clean out. By the way, our GG should never remind any of we Cardinal fans of baseball’s coveted fielding GG award. As upset as we are, a few nice Saves by GG is probably all it will take to put last night’s clusterfork on the back burner…..unless we miss the playoffs by one game. Then the April 25th Mets game would unfortunately come right back to life.
Unfortunately, over the course of 6 months there will probably be more games like this. But there should be a lot more where we have the lead going into the 8th and 9th and hold it.
In a game last week Nolan made an almost identical play where Goldy had to do the splits to make the out. Everyone on TV and the radio was bragging about Nolan but it was actually Goldy who made the play.
After last night it’s obvious to me that Nolan has difficulty making that play. Nolan is the only great 3rd baseman I can recall who likes to throw on the run, away from the play when he doesn’t have to. I’m reminded that Jim Edmonds used 2 hands to catch the ball whenever he could, even when diving for a ball, and I consider him the best outfielder I’ve ever seen. So just because you’re great doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes, so you do everything you can to prevent them. I’ve been watching Nolan during clutch situations offensively and defensively because the greatest players make the clutch plays and hit when it matters.
Goldy made another amazing play last night when it mattered. Goldy continues to impress and after the play it crossed my mind that maybe Goldy should be making the 30 Million!
Yes, I’m angry and I do expect more just because he’s one of the highest paid players.
Let’s hope Arenado doesn’t now come up with a nasty case of the yipps, like the normally great fielding Steve Sax did back in the 80’s, and start flinging the ball all over the place. The yipps are a real thing and trust me when I say it can happen to anyone. I had a slight case of the yipps myself, my sophomore year in high school…..and I was the catcher. Throwing the ball back to the pitcher even become an adventure. Watch Arenado very carefully tonight to see the accuracy of his throws. Even if he doesn’t commit a throwing error, if he has Goldy stretching all over the place, it could mean that the early stages of the yipps are settling in. And if the yipps becomes reality for our 3rd baseman? Then we can thank our lucky stars for the DH. Move Tommy E. over to 3rd, Sosa at short and bring up Gorman to man 2nd base.
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