Pinch hitting in general is a surprisingly ineffective tactic.
In MLB this year to date, 1185 plate appearances, pinch hitters are 211/317/294 for a fairly putrid 611 OPS.
Why not use him for seven then LOL. Every out matters for these guys, seriously. The number of pitches.
The thinking was all about the Yankees having the bottom of the order coming up for Barnes. He messed up.
Another thing is, you're hoping Kimbrel preserves the lead and then you score a couple more to take some pressure off him in the bottom of the 9th.
There are always a bunch of variables.
I agree that there is some desperation involved there, born out of really wanting the win and not having a lot of confidence in the bullpen in general.
There's no NBA hate going on here. mvp made a comment about baseball players being dumb and I kind of jumped on it just for something to jabber about. The topic went off in other directions. My fault really.
Pinch hitting with Holt was not a bad idea there at all. We were down by a run in the 7th and the top of the order up next. Porcello was out of the game so replacing Leon made sense. And we do have another backup catcher with Swihart. You're really kind of nitpicking on this one I think.
In spite of the negative stuff, I love having a forum like this to hang out in. In the olden times, if the Sox blew a game or were going bad, I suffered through it all on my own.
If Kimbrel can't pitch in the 8th or with men on base it kind of diminishes his greatness a wee bit, doesn't it? Rivera never seemed to have much trouble with those situations.
There's no insurance on Price's contract. This was discussed here some time back. The Sox hardly ever take out insurance because-surprise, surprise-the premiums are prohibitively expensive.
All of our best pitchers, Sale, Price, Porcello and Kimbrel, have a shaky track record when it comes to big games, big moments. Kimbrel let us down in the playoffs last year and he did it again last night. It's rather discouraging.