We watched Matt Williams pull Zimmermann in the 9th, explaining "That's what we do". And froze for the next nine innings. Now we see that Thomson was thinking the same. Wheeler had thrown 70 pitches? Pull him so a lefty could face Alvarez.
"Thinking" is not what those guys were doing. Mindless defensive button-pushing so they couldn't be blamed for not making a change that could have been made is more like it.
If either of them had thought for a moment about whether the guy they were bringing in was more likely or less likely to get an out than the guy they were replacing, they might have gotten it through their skulls to sit down and chew their cud like they do for the other three and a half hours.
