Patty Gasso, mad softball genius
Sooners' doubleheader sweep of Aggies came with odd choices, but what's new?
This may get a little tedious.
Friday in College Station, after Oklahoma and Texas A&M returned to Davis Diamond a few minutes before 1 p.m. to finish a game lightning suspended the night before, OU leading 5-3 with one out in the bottom of the sixth inning and an Aggie runner on first base, Sooner coach Patty Gasso did a curious thing.
After Audrey Lowry, OU’s best pitcher, who’d thrown every pitch the night before, returned to the circle to finish what she started and began by retiring Paisley Allen for the second out, Gasso removed Lowry, her best pitcher, in favor of Miali Guachino, her second or third.
Did we mention Lowry’s the Sooners’ best pitcher?
Guachino gave up three straight hits and the game was tied. Then, after purposely walking A&M’s most dangerous slugger, Mya Perez, to load the bases, Micaela Wark’s two-run single made it 7-5 Aggies and Sooner left fielder Abby Dayton’s throwing error made it 8-5.
Only then did Gasso remove Guachino.
OU entered the series needing one win to secure a share of the SEC regular season crown and two to claim it outright.
Also, as it happened, that was it for Friday. The Sooners and Aggies would play twice Saturday.
Despite its coach’s circle decisions doing it no favors the day before, OU was set up to begin Saturday right.
Its best pitcher, after all, had thrown only three pitches the day before.
But Gasso did another curious thing.
Though Guachino had thrown 25 pitches to get nobody out on Friday, she was nevertheless OU’s original starting pitcher on Saturday.
In no place but Gasso’s humongous softball brain was that a good idea, because here’s what it put on the table.
Had Guachino been no better than the night before, it threatened to hand the series to A&M and kill the opportunity of an outright conference title.
Had Guachino been no better than the night before and Gasso brought Lowry in to save the day, win or lose, it would kill the chance of anything but spot duty from Lowry in the nightcap.
Starting Guachino threatened everything.
You know what happened?
OU won the opener 4-3, Guachino dodging bullets until allowing three fifth-inning runs, two on back-to-back home runs from Kennedy Powell and Tallen Edwards.
But no problem, Kai Minor’s sixth-inning triple, knocking home Ella Parker, handed the Sooners the win.
What about Lowry?
In relief of Guachino, she got the win, tossing 2 2/3 scoreless innings.
OU won the nightcap, too, 6-4.
Sydney Berzon delivered five shutout innings and Allyssa Parker tossed a strong sixth but a lousy seventh, walking a batter, allowing two singles and a home run from Allen that brought A&M within two runs.
Then it was Lowry’s turn again, getting the last two outs.
That’s not all that happened.
Perhaps I buried the lede.
Kasidi Pickering entered the doubleheader 3 for 28 over her previous 10 games, but went 2 for 6, getting a hit in each game: lashing an RBI single in the first to unlock the Sooners’ three-run fourth inning and smashing a home run off the outstretched glove of A&M center fielder Kelsey Mathis in the first inning of the second, a three-run shot she had to go up and get, making it 4-0 after Kai Minor’s leadoff home run.
Good for her.
But I can’t get over Gasso.
Pitching decisions like Saturday’s have cost her in the past and cost her Friday, but never, best I can remember, once NCAA play begins.
Even then, she’s bound to remove a pitcher throwing well with the lead in the name of less work and handing the ball to a lesser pitcher in the name of creating confidence.
It’s cost her runs, but never elimination.
A long time ago, like many coaches, Gasso felt fine about riding her best arm well past 200 innings, like Paige Parker, who started 47 games in 2016 and logged 252, or Keilani Ricketts before her, who started 42 and threw 284 1/3 in 2011 and 43 and 292 in 2012.
Gasso, though, has not only come back to reasonable but beyond, routinely rolling out three different starting pitchers on a weekend.
As a manager of personnel, she’s greedy in service of the long run, greater good and best of all possible worlds. But not so much today.
As a dugout manager, she’s all about today, not just how the game’s played and approached, but the attention, tone, vibe and body language in the dugout, too.
So, Saturday, in a hostile atmosphere, with much on the line, throwing their best pitcher only in relief and only for 3 1/3 innings, the Sooners swept nonetheless, grabbing that regular season conference crown along the way, whether or not it was their coach’s first priority.
It’s nothing new.
Patty Gasso coaches dangerously.
Patty Gasso coaches confoundingly.
Almost always, it works.
Go figure.
I can’t.
Clay Horning is right, and the ending makes it better, not worse. Eight national championships. Thirty-one years. A .812 winning percentage. Patty Gasso has earned the right to coach however she chooses, and on Sunday in Austin she chose development over the scoreboard. She put her back-end arms in a hostile environment against a great Texas team and said: learn. That’s not a lack of killer instinct. That’s what building a dynasty actually looks like from the inside. And then Katie Stewart hit that ball and the scoreboard said something else entirely.
Here’s the thing about Horning’s read: he’s right on both counts simultaneously. Gasso made the right call and the scoreboard still punished her for it. That’s not a contradiction. That’s the game. Kendall Wells has 31 home runs in 44 games. Eight Sooners hitting above .400. Six with on-base percentages above .500. This is not a team in trouble. This is a team being coached by someone who understands that one April loss in Austin doesn’t kill a season, and that the pitchers who will matter in Oklahoma City in June need innings in June-like conditions now. Dominance is not a given. You build it. You protect it by investing in it even when the investment costs you a game. Four consecutive national championships didn’t happen because she played it safe with a lead. They happened because she spent thirty-one years putting the program’s future ahead of the present moment’s result. The scoreboard told her what that decision was worth on Sunday. In June, she’ll tell the scoreboard what it’s worth to her. Boomer.