It wasn't discussed in interview. For any gruff I give Martinez, including my post other day bashing poor defense other day, I refuse to believe that there won't be a volcanic blowup today if it did not already happen last night.
I know it won't, but I wish I believed that was the type of embarrassing moment that would light a fire under this team to focus a bit more on being clean in pitching and defense.
I imagine it was more than one blow up. One for the entire team, then one for the players, then one for the coaches.
This is an abject failure by everyone. Gallo is veteran, and Yepez and Tena both had the vast majority of their development done in other systems.
Gallo shouldn't have been tagging. I kind of understand it, given that Judge's almost singlehandedly won them the game the night before because of his defensive prowess. But as soon as Judge turns his back, he has to forgo tagging. He doens't have to start sprinting, but he can't be tagging.
Yepez needed to pay attention to the runner in front of him. As soon as he saw that he was like 20 feet from Gallo, he has to know he's not scoring. Go back to second.
Tena is thinking a double out of the box. He literally crushed a ball to the wall, he's supposed to. At some point, he needs to look up and see what the hell is going on.
Gutierrez has to keep Gallo on third. Short of tackling him, he needs to be screaming that the play is dead, get on third. Parra needed to be watching Yepez and Gallo, keeping Tena at first (maybe he did, I don't know)
The worst case scenario for that play should have been bases loaded, no outs. But through everyone's colossal freak ups, it was a double play.
I think this is the catalyst for focus on defense and baserunning during next spring training, similar to how Irvin, Gore, and Gray's walks in 2023 became the focus of Spring Training in 2024.
