Regardless of the outcome of this game, this series, this season or the future of our head coach, Pete Hughes can lay claim to what might be the dumbest baseball team of all time at any level.
Not once, but twice in a single game, we had runners called out for leaving base too early on tags.
In the first case, with runners on 1st/2nd and one out, our guy hits a deep, but easily caught fly ball to left. Guy on second tags and heads to 3rd. Guy on 1st runs halfway to second, sees the ball caught, and then trots to second. Doesn't even go back to first. There was absolutely zero question on whether the ball was caught. He waited, saw the ball was caught, and then jogged to second. Setting aside wherever the player's brain was, where the hell is the 1st base coach to tell him to get his ass back? Naturally, we challenge the call and waste our last challenge when it's clear as day that he didn't even tag - let alone leave early.
You'd think we'd be on high alert after that play, but not to be outdone, in the seventh, we have a guy on 1st with no outs. Our guy at the plate does his job by hitting a deep fly to center that, once again, was easily caught. The ball was caught at the warning track - again - not a liner, but a high, easily caught fly ball, so our guy on 1st has plenty of time to get to 2nd. But, he takes off early and we have our second monumentally stupid double play in the same game.
While this is undoubtedly the Mt. Everest of our stupidity, we have consistently been idiotic on the base paths during the entire tenure of Hughes and that has cost ourselves countless runs (and games).
In four straight innings in this game, K-State had the tying run at second base and came away empty every time - mostly due to baserunning stupidity.
Just unreal...
