Sorry folks, this dude has gone and done it...I posted this literally to you last week. I'll take this chronologically...
Against BC, he did hit the first guy up in the 6th but got the next guy to pop up to CF BUUUUUUUT Nolan got lazy and somehow didn't make a play on the ball. So instead of one out with a dude on first there's runners on 2nd and 3rd and no outs. Sam strikes out the next dude and then jams the guy after that with a pop up to LF and Trice doesn't really make an attempt on the that ball either. Maybe he played it right but the video doesn't really look good. So, again, Sam makes the pitch he needs to get the 2nd out and only give up at most one run but his defense does him zero favors. Nolan and Trice play defense that inning should've been over fairly quickly. The first hard hit ball of the inning was the HR to Wang on a fastball up and in a hair. Sam was ahead in the count 1-2 which sucks. The very next pitch after the Wang bomb was a base hit and then he gets pulled. Not sure how anyone thinks Sam should've been pulled any sooner when BC wasn't hitting him very well. Once they did he gets yanked which IMO was the appropriate time.
I don't necessarily disagree about last night but it was Friday, game 1 of the series so you want to try and limit the arms to save the bullpen for the rest of the weekend, if you can. Especially when Willadsen and Fritton aren't going to eat up innings Saturday and Sunday. Willadsen has thrown more than 6 innings just once all year, going 7 against UVA (on 118 pitches). Fritton hasn't thrown past the 6th inning in league play. He did go 5 and two thirds against UVA but didn't make it a full 6. Knowing that, you gotta let Sam work it out, if possible. He didn't and Miralia goes in against a lefty/lefty situation. If you notice, Rio was warming up earlier in the inning but when Louisville pinch hit a righty for the lefty DH, they kept Sam in. Once they eventually put 4 runs on the board that inning we pivoted to Miralia to save Rio (IMO). Thankfully John did his job and then some to set up the comeback. They kept him out there in the 9th b/c there were 2 lefties coming up as well.
Sam doesn't have it? Dude was lights out against UVA (5.2 innings total , no hits, no runs and 3 K's), the best hitting team in the conference and a top two hitting team in the country. He was damn good against Miami the weekend before that, another really good team. He's coming back from an injury and many of us have said it can be an up and down experience managing it.
IMO, him throwing in 50 degree weather up in Boston and pouring down rain Friday night wasn't the most comfortable situations for him. I know the hot takes are fun but...
Your response: "Good response. I agree that we will need Highfill if we want to make noise like we know we can this year. Reading your breakdown, maybe it was flukier than it seemed,
and I'd like to see Highfill go out there and get a shutdown inning just for his own confidence soon. We're gonna need him this season"
He literally got you 2.1 shutdown innings today. I'll cut this up into multiple posts to make it easy on you. *Wolfpack Baseball - 2021 *NCAA COLLEGE WORLD SERIES CHAMPS!
*Congrats to the 10 win 2021 Wolfpack football team!