The St. Louis Cardinals held a 5-1 lead over the Pittsburgh Pirates entering the final innings on Friday night. Then, Oli Marmol pulled an Oli Marmol.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, Marmol put Giovanny Gallegos into the game. Sadly, that did not go as planned for either the talented righty or the Cardinals.
Gallegos gave up four runs against Pittsburgh, including the lead. A ground-rule double by Carlos Santana and a home run by Ke'Bryan Hayes were the vital blows in what may end up being a very important game in the standings for St. Louis.
After the contest, Marmol blamed the offense for not breaking the game open, rather than his decision to bring in Gallegos. Marmol defended that call, suggesting that a lead-off walk by Jack Flaherty was a tell-tale sign that something wasn't right.
Gallegos failed to strike out Jack Suwinski, which Marmol pointed to as Gallegos main job upon entry.
Once Gallegos failed to strike out Suwinski, however, Marmol proceeded to keep him in the game, even after the run-scoring double given up to Santana.
Cardinals: Oli Marmol's explanation wasn't good enough
The choice to go with Gallegos itself is not a bad one — he entered the game with a 2.38 ERA. However, Flaherty had (despite what Marmol may think was a concerning walk) been dealing against a struggling Pirates team. There's a good chance that just facing another pitcher helped wake the offense out of its slumber. Sometimes, overthinking can be a manager's worst nightmare.
In one appearance, Gallegos saw his ERA climb from a sub-3 mark to near four. It's deflating for any reliever, let alone one on an analytics-based club like St. Louis, where he will be consistently reminded.
It's yet another case of Marmol doing more harm than good.
