By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2016/05/18/who-got-what-who-got-not-over-the-rangers-jays-basebrawl/It turns out that I was right in how I called at least two of the punishments handed down for the
Texas-Toronto basebrawl game Sunday. Elsewhere, there were a few surprises.
Rougned Odor, whose roundhouse to Jose Bautista’s face exploded what Matt Bush’s drill of
Bautista and Bautista’s hard but nowhere near dirty slide into Odor at second base merely ignited,
got eight games and a $5,000 fine. Bautista got one game off. Thinking twice, he should have gotten
none and Odor probably should have gotten more.
I’ve watched replays of that slide numerous times. The slide was hard, the slide was slightly late
(he didn’t drop into it until he was about four feet from second base), but he wasn’t exactly trying
to draw and quarter Odor. By his own admission, Bautista was looking to send a message about
getting drilled at the plate, but he wasn’t looking to injure.
Isn’t it funny how a lot of people yapping about Odor dealing with it old-school style haven’t remembered,
assuming they knew, that Bautista did things the old-school style when he slid hard? Old school: if you
got drilled at the plate, you took your base and then delivered a hard message at second base if a followup
ground ball gave you the opportunity.
Then, when Bautista got up from the slide, he might have said a word or three to Odor but it was Odor
who attacked physically first. He shoved Bautista hard enough to provoke Bautista into extending an arm
to defend himself, then he threw and landed the right cross heard and seen around the world.
Among the more asinine comments I’ve seen about the brawl over the past few days have come from
people saying, in effect, Bautista merely got what was finally coming to him because he’s a “whiny punk”
with an “attitude problem,” etc. et. al. blah-blah, woof-woof.
So Bautista’s a head case? Or at least not the most popular player in baseball outside Toronto? Fine. Since
when do you have the right to throw at him, then punch him out when he answers with a hard but uninjurious
slide trying to bust up a double play? Near the end of a regular season series against him? Seven months after
the incident (his fabled bat flip after whacking what proved a division-series three-run homer) that got under
your skin in the first place?
Sorry. I say again—the Rangers had their proper chance to send Bautista a message about that bat flip, if that’s
what they wanted. It should have been done in the first set of the season series, in Toronto, a week and a half
before Sunday night’s
soiree, if it had to be done at all. Not in the eighth inning of the final regular season game
of the year between the two teams.
Indeed, in the Toronto leg of the series the Rangers had the classic opportunity to send Bautista a message early
—one of the pitchers who faced him was Sam Dyson, off whom Bautista hit that monstrous, division-series turning
three-run homer last fall.
But Dyson never made a move.
Odor may be the most oddly popular athlete in Texas these days, but he ought to count himself lucky that eight
games and five large lighter in the ledger was all he got. Five thousand dollars is mere tip money even on his
$522,700 2016 salary.
So who got what otherwise?
* I thought Rangers reliever Matt Bush should have gotten a game off at least for throwing at Bautista to begin
his Sunday relief assignment. Bush was fined for throwing the pitch but nothing more. Maybe baseball government
took into account that Bush wasn’t ejected right then and there, and that the umpires issued warnings to both
sides after he drilled Bautista.
But I’d still like to know whether he threw on his own or if someone among the Rangers’ brain trust ordered the
pitch. A pitcher who wasn’t even in the Rangers organisation last fall going for payback against the guy who bat-
flipped a dramatic home run against them? Something still doesn’t add up there.
* I thought Jesse Chavez, the Blue Jays reliever whose first order of business seemed to be drilling Prince Fielder
after both sides were warned following the Bush plunk, should get three games. That’s what he got. I have no idea
what Chavez was thinking and, in this case, I almost don’t care. He was plain out of line throwing at Fielder. Case
closed.
* I thought Blue Jays manager John Gibbons should get a single game suspension merely under the rule that says
you can’t return to the field after you’ve been ejected, which Gibbons was over arguing balls and strikes several innings
earlier. I was surprised he got three games. Jays first base coach Tim Leiper got a single game for a similar infraction
and both men were fined amounts not revealed.
Gibbons returned to the field foolishly enough under the circumstances of his earlier ejection, but the manager acted
instinctively in a bid to protect his players during an ugly brawl. That should have been taken into account when
measuring his punishment, and it doesn’t seem to have been.
* I was amazed that neither Josh Donaldson nor Kevin Pillar—the first Jays to fly out of the dugout after Bautista got
punched—got suspended but Texas’s Elvis Andrus did. Donaldson and Pillar were practically the first Jays to fly out of
the dugout after Bautista got decked, and they went slightly wild out in the middle of the mixup.
Andrus got his for throwing a punch during the scrum—he missed his target, apparently, but just throwing the punch
got him docked. Pillar got hit with a fine but Donaldson escaped unscathed. Interesting, considering Pillar looked and
acted even more wild than Donaldson, while Donaldson merely managed to reach Odor and take him down. I thought
each of them would get a game each, and should have gotten it.
* I thought DeMarlo Hale, the Jays’ bench coach who was acting manager from the third inning forward, might have
gotten dinged a game at least since Chavez defied the warnings and drilled Fielder on Hale’s watch. Hale was ejected
from the game but not otherwise disciplined over the drill on Fielder.
* Two other Rangers pitchers—Dyson and A.J. Griffin—were fined. Dyson, for aggressive actions; Griffin, for being
on the field during the scrum despite being on the disabled list. So was Rangers catcher Robinson Chirinos.
You’d think that of all people the pitcher whom Bautista “showed up” with that bat flip—in front of his home audience,
seeing playoff baseball for the first time in over two decades, lost with them in the moment—would be the one to send
the return message, assuming such a return message was called for.
Opportunity blown. And should have been kept as such for all time. The Rangers had their legitimate chance when
their season series with the Jays opened, and they blew it. Those singing Odor’s and Bush’s praises for “putting Bautista
in his place” (yes, I’ve seen people say just that) ought to ask what’s so brave and bold about waiting until the near-end
of the regular season series to get a dubiously warranted payback.
Maybe they fear the answer. Brave and bold it wasn’t.
