Come on now.
Please address my points:
1. Did WAKE FOREST also make a pitching change on Friday to try to win Pool Game 2? YES. And did they have a national seed at stake? NO. So the ONLY reason why Wake used a better pitcher on Friday was because of PRIDE, that they wanted to win the ACC Tournament, knowing full well that Saturday and Sunday might have been rained out. If we go to the Wake board, are they all whining about using that pitcher on Friday and him being unavailable on Saturday? NO. Because they are not going to act like crybabies over the use of ONE pitcher for ONE start.
2. Was Walters coming in to pitch 3 innings? NO. You are acting like the Duke and Wake games were the problem, yet he threw 14 and 13 pitches in those two games. He wasn't coming in at the beginning of the 7th because he never comes in that early, and NOT because of 14 and 13 pitches in the preceding two nights. Just be honest about it. Please PLEASE tell me about all the games where we trotted Walters out to start the 7th. I'll wait.
3. Finally, this "win at all costs" myth about the Friday game against Duke is complete nonsense. It's just a joke. Did we pitch Gallo for 4 and 1/3? Sure. But Wake made the same calculation, using a better pitcher on Friday, and you don't hear their fans whining and crying like small children. It's just silly. So let's break it down...if "Gallo" goes 5 innings (instead of Chestnutt/Scinta), what happens? Does he give up 3 fewer runs in 5 innings than they did? We gave up 8 runs in the 7th inning, this wasn't an issue with our starters. What, Chestnutt/Scinta would have been pitching in the 7th? Whatever. "Rafe doesn't go the 2nd inning"? Come on, he gave us a 1-2-3 inning in the 6th, let's not pretend he was a ticking time bomb. "Torres never sees the mound"? Really? And yet we used him in that "win at all costs" Duke game and he was fine. The only other time we used him was for FOUR pitches against Wake. So WHY would we not have used Torres? If you say "earlier this season", fine, but at least acknowledge he was fine in the tournament until today. And you completely ignore that we had Laquerica, who had looked good earlier. And you are inventing a pitch count possibility for Walters that, while possibly true, still doesn't put him on the mound to start the 7th.
It's all speculative. And for the record, I'm not ripping Arteaga. I think he should have let Rafe pitch farther into the 7th and should have brought Laquerica in instead of Torres.
And to put it another way, if Villegas makes that catch, we only trail 7-5. And we stranded 2 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th. So we COULD HAVE STILL WON THE GAME if we don't give up 4 runs after that drop happens.
So let's not act like it was ALL about "Gallo" or "Walters". The 7th inning was a mess, but half of it happened after an error that should have ended the inning.