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| Kirk himself is spotless as a lamb in all of this |
It is not second-guessing to be like man oh man I do not understand why John Schneider did not pinch-run for DH Alejandro Kirk as he stood at third base with one out in the eighth inning of a two-run game in a wildcard playoff race as September draws near oh no he has been thrown out at the plate on a flyball to medium-depth CF; everybody was first guessing it! There is extensive evidence of this through both internet postings (timestamped) and the SMS text messages exchanged between pals (no less timestamped)! It was a close enough play (Kirk, ever hustling, is blameless in this) that literally any other player on the roster would have made it home safely! If Kirk had been catching, and pinch-running for him would have meant sliding Danny Jansen out of the DH spot, thus losing the DH spot the rest of the way, who cares? It's the eighth! You just pinch hit! But that isn't even what he had to think about; you can (and should!) always embrace the freedoms afforded by the DH: endless substitution with no defensive consequence! Schneider's post-game explanation that he would have pinch-run for Kirk had they been trailing not by two but by just one (what?) but that he needed to keep Kirk's bat in the lineup in case he came up again (like in the eleventh?) was just brutal. Pushing across a single run in a ninth-inning that the Nats seemed content to totally just hand to us (bases loaded, nobody out) was even worse. That's two out of three games with season-worst vibes, and the teams we need to catch are pulling away. The realm harshens by the day!
KS
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