So the Tigers and the Red Sox got into a little scuffle last night due to some hit batters. They went back and forth throwing at each other over the course of two games, but apparently Rick Porcello crossed the line when he hit Kevin Youkilis.
Take a second to watch the video. Then consider this:
This is Porcello’s first year in the majors, and he’s enjoying a fine season, after being ranked as the Tigers' number one prospect. I know he probably has some thick skin – you have to to make it this far in his line of work – and I’m sure he has a great makeup. But Porcello is 20 years old and a rookie, while Youkilis is 30 years old and a former MVP candidate. Call it a hunch, but I have to imagine that after last night’s harrowing experience – seeing the bald, bearded, barrel-chested, mountain man-esque Kevin Youkilis charging at him like a bull – Rick Porcello will never be the same again. If he’s on your fantasy team, drop him. If you had any hopes in the Tigers, abandon them. I know I’m overreacting for dramatic effect, but I can’t imagine he’ll be totally focused on the game after spending the night before his start having nightmares about seeing Kevin Youkilis’s pine tar-stained batting helmet hurtling through the air toward his face.
This fracas occurred just two days after White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen went on record saying that he has no qualms about having his pitchers throw at opposing batters in retaliation for one of his players getting plunked, regardless of the consequences.
Now I’ve never played for a major league team, but everything I’ve seen and heard about the subject of bean ball revenge has led me to believe that there is a pretty comprehensive and well-understood system of unwritten rules in place there. And when players “break” the “rules” – as Kevin Youkilis clearly thought Rick Porcello had done – things can get out of hand, the benches can clear, and punitive action can be taken (Youk and Porc each received suspensions for their parts in the brawl). But if you have people like Guillen running their mouths about the unwritten rules, you get more people talking about it, it becomes more and more of an issue, and it gets brought to the attention of the people who make the actual written rules.
I just don’t want the institution of vigilante justice in baseball to go the way of the spitball or sign stealing or other strategies that are technically allowed by the rules and essentially policed by the players and managers themselves. There have been similar attempts to eliminate the intentional walk in the same way, and more recent baseball writers have argued for and against the tactic. I don’t like the intentional walk, personally, but I’d defend to the death (or at least to humiliation) your right to walk me on four straight pitches.
Brawls are a part of the game of baseball. You have 50 athletes all told, between the two teams in a game, and anywhere from 10 to 13 players on the field at a time. One of these players is engaged in throwing a fist-sized ball, as hard as he possibly can, towards another player, who in turn is in possession of a large wooden club, attempting to hit the tar out of this fist-sized ball. The whole enterprise is aggression-charged to say the least. The stakes are incredibly high at every moment, everyone’s giving 100% of their physical and mental ability, and tempers tend to flare in certain situations. If you try to regulate the events that lead to the brawls, you are essentially attempting to regulate the passion with which the players play their game. Not to pontificate, but that’s not the direction in which I’d like to see the game move.
I am the #1 advocate of beaning, so I must also accept that it sometimes has consequences.
ReplyDeleteI regularly hear/read former ball players complaining about how the umps currently handle pitching inside and potential beanings. A few decades ago, the unwritten rules were more in the players' hands it seems. You hit an unnecessary homerun off me, I might throw a ball up near the next batter's face. Now, umps (probably at the insistence of injury-fearing general managers) let batter's dictate when a pitcher's gone too far. It doesn't seem like you can challenge a hitter inside too much without getting a warning.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't necessarily endorse Ozzie Guillen's "You hit my guy, we hit two of yours" policy of all-out beanball warfare, I think that a pitcher's ability to challenge a hitter is being diminished. And it hurts the game.
I dunno, I thought Porcello held his own pretty damned well against that terror coming straight for him like a freight train. It looks to me like he actually changed around his momentum and threw Youk to the ground. If I were him, I'd be pretty proud of that.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I agree that way too often there's some serious overreaction to pitchers throwing inside. Sometimes it's obviously intentional, But many times it's an honest slip. You have to challenge a guy inside once in a while, and there's a very fine, inch-wide difference between a brush-off-the-plate-so-I-can-have-my-inside-corner pitch and a plunk in the hand or shoulder that gets these messes started.