Clemson won the rubber game of the the three game set yesterday, and it was mostly because my Gamecocks just handed it to them.
Carolina was one strike from victory when Beer homered to deep right field in the 9th to tie the game at 3-3. The Gamecocks loaded the bases in the bottom half of the inning, but the contest went to extra frames when Carolina was unable to push the winning run across.
What this article doesn't tell you is much about the way the Gamecocks failed in the ninth inning. Allow me to walk you through the wreckage of bad-decisions.
When the Gamecocks got the first two runners on in the ninth, Alex Destino (arguably the best hitter on the team) came to the plate. Seems pretty promising, no? All the Gamecocks had to do was get the winning run from second base home, and there was no one out with our best hitter up.
So Chad Holbrook promptly decides to not only bunt the runners over to second and third in that situation (wrong, yet forgivable) but he decides to pinch hit for the best hitter on the team to execute the bunt. Yes, that's right campers. Alex Destino was told that not only was he not trusted enough to get a hit, but that he wasn't trusted enough to get the bunt down.
Oh, and the replacement guy? The guy who's one job it was to drop down a bunt? Yeah, he promptly popped the bunt up and it was caught by the Clemson catcher in front of home plate, so the entire plan utterly and completely failed.
Failure all around.
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