We get it. Baseball had to make a statement in suspending Yordano Ventura for instigating yet another brawl thanks to yet another overly emotional in-game reaction and perhaps a whole lot of personal enmity for Manny Machado given they mixed it up back in September. But is Ventura’s nine-game suspension enough?
No, no it is not enough. Nine games equals one missed start. That’s nothing. That’s a twinge and a precautionary sit-down. That’s a timeout for somebody whose tantrums are dangerous to the people he plays against. Given Ventura’s past history, MLB needed to make the strongest possible point of saying that it won’t tolerate anybody throwing high-90s heat with intent at people on the field.
I say that while acknowledging that I’ve been one of the more patient people with Ventura’s anger-management issues, writing about it after his run-in with Adam Eaton back in the big Royals-White Sox rumble of April 2015, and now this latest bit of mound mayhem. And I do still hope we get to see a Yordano Ventura who gets his act together, harnesses his league-beating heat, and gives the Royals -- or somebody -- the quality starting pitcher so many folks think he can be.
But remember, after the Eaton fracas Ventura received a seven-game suspension -- and he didn’t even hit Eaton with a pitch. Dialing up the suspension-o-meter to nine isn’t just incremental, it lacks a sense of proportion. If you’re in the business of meting out punishments and you’re going to prosecute players for on-field violence, you dial it up way past nine games, because you’re operating from the belief that what Ventura did put another player’s health and career at risk. If he wants to argue that it was all an accident, that’s on him and his representatives to try to get the suspension dropped down toward … well, more than seven games, you’d hope. And more than nine.
You have to feel for the Royals, assuming their patience with Ventura hasn’t already been exhausted. This will have a direct impact on their rotation just as they’ve tried to make a move in the AL Central only to suffer a seven-game stumble with an injury-wracked roster. They’ve already got swingman Danny Duffy in the rotation, and they’re still waiting on Kris Medlen and Mike Minor to come back off the DL. They’re in a bad spot. But that’s irrelevant to baseball’s responsibilities for enforcement in a situation as serious as this.
As for the punishment meted out to Machado, four games and a $2,500 fine is pretty light. He’s already announced his intention to appeal and he might whittle a game or two off that, while the cash is the equivalent of pizza and PBR money for a guy making $5 million now and on the cusp of making zillions more in a long-term free-agent deal after the 2018 season. It’s almost like baseball is saying, “bad Manny” with an understanding shrug and a wink, because taking a 99-mph fastball in the back isn’t something most of us have to put up with on the job.
That’s the thing. You can’t wink at this. As sympathetic as we can be about why Machado charged the mound after getting beaned, you’ve got to be hard on him too. And if the game really wants Ventura to clean up his act, it needs to be even harder still with him.
Christina Kahrl writes about MLB for ESPN. You can follow her on Twitter.
