By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/08/shawn-kelleys-blues.html
Now-DFA'd Shawn Kelley, retrieving the glove
he slammed down in frustration after Austin
Jackson's two-run homer Tuesday night
---but was there more to it than just a bomb
disrupting a massacre?That old mocking ditty, "Every party needs a pooper/that's why we invited you/party pooper," got a sad twist in Washington Tuesday night. It cost Nationals righthander Shawn Kelley his place on the club, but it may have cost the Nats a little more credibility in the team culture by letting Kelley go.
You'd think that a reliever whose team took a 25-1 lead into the top of the ninth would laugh his fool head off when he gets a run-scoring out but surrenders a two-run homer immediately after, before closing out the human rights violations by sandwiching a measly single between a fly out and a ground out.
Or, if he couldn't laugh it off, at least indicate that he didn't mind offering a little mercy to a collection of Mets whose season of embarrassment came to the worst single-game embarrassment in their franchise's history. Not laughing it off helped get Kelley designated for assignment Wednesday morning.
Welcome to
Shawn Kelley's Blues.
With Mets rookie Jeff McNeil aboard, after his grounder to second forced Jose Reyes while Michael Conforto scored the first Met run of that not-so-good-gray night for them, Kelley faced Austin Jackson, whom the Mets signed last month after his release by the Rangers. Kelley's first pitch hit the ceiling of the strike zone but was called a dubious ball one. Then, he threw one right to the low outside corner. And Jackson drove it over the left center field wall.
The Mets signed Jackson after the Rangers---to whom he was traded by the Giants---released him a week after acquiring him but designating him for assignment. Signing Jackson was seen as an outfield depth move after Juan Lagares and Yoenis Cespedes went out for the season with injuries. They had no idea Jackson would deliver a blow that helped knock a Nationals pitcher off the team entirely.
Jackson's bomb cut the Nats lead to 25-4. Good thing they scored six in the bottom of the eighth with Reyes, the veteran shortstop, on the mound taking one for the team and taking a six-run pasting for his gallantry. Obviously the Nats needed the insurance runs.
None of which crossed Kelley's mind after Jackson teed off. He may have been steamed already after the plate umpire urged him to slow it down before Jackson checked in at the plate. And you couldn't really blame him for wanting to put the finish on the Nats' massacre.
The Mets at least had more of a sense of humour about the Tuesday night massacre. When a fan tweeted, "How do you give up a touchdown and an extra point in the first?" the Mets themselves replied, "They ran back the opening kickoff."
But as Jackson's drive sailed out, Kelley wound up his arm and slammed his glove to the ground. Witnesses also saw him look toward the dugout with a glare; some thought it was aimed at Nats manager Dave Martinez. Nobody seemed to think that maybe Kelley was just putting on a mock outrage act, the way Ryan Zimmerman did in the eighth when one of Reyes's soft tossed caught him in the leg causing both dugouts to crack up.
General manager Mike Rizzo certainly did think Kelley was trying to show up Martinez, as you could tell by his remarks after he DFA'd Kelley. "I thought that the act that he portrayed on the field last night was disrespectful to the name on the front of the jersey, the organisation, specifically Dave Martinez," Rizzo said.
"You're either in or you're in the way," the GM continued. "That's something you don't come back from. It was a disrespectful act, and I thought it warranted him leaving the team. I didn't see how he could face his teammates and the coaching staff and the manager again after such a selfish act."
Martinez himself seemed to be of two minds about it. First, he criticised Kelley for acting childishly in that moment, but then he took pains to say he didn't think Kelley was trying to show him up. Sort of. "I know he was frustrated," the skipper said. "Knowing what we did yesterday, scoring all those runs, everybody's feeling good. He comes in the game, slams his glove, frustrated. That bothered me. A lot . . . He's a guy I got to know personally. He's not a bad person. He's not."
Martinez doesn't need anyone to remind him good people make bad mistakes. Does Rizzo need someone to remind him how foolish it looks to DFA a pitcher having one bad moment in the wake of a team trading for a relief pitcher with a domestic violence charge hanging over his head? (The Astros did just that, getting Roberto Osuna from the Blue Jays for embattled, farmed-out former closer Ken Giles.)
But Martinez also indicated he believed Kelley's frustration came from the contradictory umpire messages.
Kelley, a former Yankee, has a 3.34 earned run average this season, and he had allowed home runs in two of his past four assignments, but he'd also pitched sixteen innings with seventeen strikeouts and only one walk before going out for the ninth Tuesday night. Any way you saw it, he was having a far better season than he had last year.
Washington Post baseball writer Chelsea Janes tweeted that Kelley's frustration came from two sources not named Martinez: the plate ump telling him to slow down, and the second base ump telling him he wasn't coming set in the stretch. "(S)o it bubbled over when he allowed the homer," Janes said. Another
Post sportswriter, Jorge Castillo, quoted Kelley thus: "I should not have thrown my glove. You should never throw your glove. We should act like adults."
Maybe Martinez and Rizzo both should have asked Kelly what was up before Rizzo tried, convicted, and sentenced him in one swing Wednesday morning. And maybe Kelley shouldn't have been as frustrated as Larry Brown, of
Larry Brown Sports, suggested he was over coming in to close out an historic blowout.
Maybe this is part of what a lot of observers prior to the non-waiver trade deadline meant when they described the Nats' clubhouse as a little less than idyllic and maybe enough on the side of confusion. Reports began seeping forth last month that Martinez was so bent on forging relationships with the team's stars that he's neglected doing likewise with the team's less glittering players.
Kelley may have been out of line in his frustration after a meaningless home run sailed out on his dollar near the end of his franchise's most lopsided win ever, but maybe Rizzo's response was just as lopsided. "Leave it to the Nationals to dampen a historic win by making a big show about respect," wrote
Deadspin's Patrick Redford.
Kelley didn't help his own cause when he talked to the
Post after the game. "I was just trying to get through the inning and get the game over with," he told
Post reporter Ben Nuckols. "I thought everybody had seen enough baseball for one evening."
Janes also reported that Kelley and Brandon Kintzler, the latter traded to the Cubs for a minor leaguer just before the non-waiver trade deadline, made for ridding the Nats of two well-liked bullpen veterans. She also said Kintzler may have been suspected of being the Nats source telling
Yahoo! Sports's Jeff Passan that the Nats clubhouse culture was curdling, though she added Kintzler denied it.
"I've never talked to Jeff Passan in my life," Kintzler told a radio interviewer, "so that's an interesting accusation. I know for a fact that someone got him to admit his source was not a player, so it wasn't me."
The Nats called up minor league righthander Jimmy Cordero to take Kelley's roster spot and already had Wander Suero on board to succeed Kintzler. They're considered durable young arms offering Martinez a pocketful of bullpen options.
But if Kintzler was dealt because the Nats wanted to kill the actual or suspected messenger, the optics are just as bad, if not worse, than cashiering another reliever whose momentary frustration at the end of a blowout was punished out of proportion to the crime.
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