Blue Jays have good reason to feel hard done by on Bautista decision

Jose Bautista talks with the media about his suspension being upheld by the MLB.

TORONTO – So let’s get this straight – Player A celebrates an iconic post-season home run with a bat flip, gets thrown at intentionally by the vanquished and embittered club seven months later, slides aggressively into second base to show his displeasure as Player B throws a relay at him, gets attacked by Player B, ends up with a one-game suspension, and then has his appeal denied.

Meanwhile, the pitcher who hit Player A gets a token fine but no suspension, and Player B, with a well-earned rep for being dirty, somehow gets his eight-game ban – light in the first place when compared to, say, the 10 games Michael Barrett got for socking A.J. Pierzynski in 2006 – reduced to seven on appeal despite showing no remorse for triggering a brawl.

This, apparently, is Major League Baseball’s idea of discipline.

What?

“I can’t say that I agree with it, but he’s got his right to appeal,” Jose Bautista, Player A in this instance, said of Rougned Odor, or Player B, on Friday after the all-star right-fielder’s suspension was upheld. “He either has friends in high places or that organization does, or he did a really good job of convincing them that … I don’t even know what. He convinced them of something.”

The opaque nature of that something, of the rationale for the way discipline was initially meted out for the brawl between the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers earlier this month, and for the appeals process that followed, is one of many things that stink here.

Bautista, represented by the players union during a 2½ hour appeal Thursday heard by John McHale Jr., Major League Baseball’s chief information officer and executive vice-president of administration, presented examples of more than 20 slides far more egregious than his in which no discipline was rendered.

Most of the comps presented by MLB did, prompting Bautista to say they “didn’t seem to be relevant to my situation.”

No matter the examples cited, he’s surely the first player suspended for sliding aggressively into a base, not touching the infielder, and then getting punched after getting plunked for flipping his bat.

Awesome precedent.

“I think it’s unfair,” Bautista said of the appeal process. “It’s all I’m saying.”

On a micro level, the Blue Jays have good reason to feel hard done by, starting with umpire Dan Iassogna’s awful decision to not eject Matt Bush after he hit Bautista with the first pitch of the eighth inning May 15 and issue warnings to both teams, a mishandling of the situation that inflamed matters.

Incredibly, neither Bush nor Rangers manager Jeff Banister, no stranger for whipping up trouble and who surely ordered his right-hander to hit Bautista, were suspended.

Think about that and remember how last year’s melee with the Kansas City Royals was handled, when Josh Donaldson got hit by Edinson Volquez, warnings were issued but Ryan Madson hit Troy Tulowitzki on the wrist and stayed in the game before Aaron Sanchez was ejected for hitting Alcides Escobar, and was later suspended. Then consider that Phil Hughes recently threw at Donaldson twice but only Blue Jays manager John Gibbons got chunked, and suddenly all the hosers complaining about baseball’s anti-Canadian bias don’t sound like obsessed X-Files fans too eager to get their Mulder and Scully on.

On a more macro level, there are a concerning number of bad messages delivered by all these decisions, first and foremost among them that players who celebrate big homers on the field are fair game in the batter’s box.

If you intend to argue that Bautista had it coming for his antics, well then, you’re exactly the type of person Bryce Harper is trying to reach with his “Make Baseball Fun Again,” message. Pay attention to Harper, his thinking is the future.

Sucking all personality from the game is no way to reach a new generation of fans, while not liking someone’s strut shouldn’t leave a player subject to vigilante justice, which is clearly what happened to Bautista on May 15.

And if baseball is going to let pitchers throw at hitters with, at most, a mere wrist slap, then umpires shouldn’t issue warnings that prevent teams from protecting their own and policing matters themselves.

It shouldn’t take a major injury to bring about change on that front, the way Buster Posey’s broken leg led to the home plate collision rule and Chase Utley’s vicious tackle on Ruben Tejada last fall brought about the new slide rule.

This is not solely a Blue Jays issue, but a baseball issue.

The anger felt this week by the Arizona Diamondbacks after Pirates reliever Arquimedes Caminero hit Jean Segura on the helmet and Nick Ahmed on the chin in consecutive innings is rooted in Pittsburgh’s well-earned rep for hitting batters. They had some history, too, as back in 2014 Ernesto Frieri broke Paul Goldschmidt’s hand, with Andrew McCutchen later getting hit in the back in apparent retaliation.

Both Diamondbacks manager Chip Hale and chief baseball officer Tony La Russa took issue with the Pirates after this week’s trouble.

“A lot of guys who are pitching in don’t have the ability at this point to command it and it becomes very dangerous,” La Russa told Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic. “The reasoning you get from the other side is they didn’t mean to do it intentionally. If you don’t have command, then that’s intentionally careless.”

Intentionally careless, or intentional period, pitchers shouldn’t have free reign to throw at batters, and MLB officials ignored that in Bautista’s case. Instead they punished him for what was deemed a dirty slide, although to really see what a dangerous slide looks like, simply check Odor’s resume. Conveniently, Brandon Morrow recently posted to Twitter a compilation of his dodgiest work. None earned a suspension.

Brandon Morrow on Twitter

As for MLB’s rationale, well, there’s nothing beyond its statement when the punishments were initially announced, which cited Bautista’s “actions during the incident and for his post-game comments.”

The details are clear as mud.

“I think they owe it to the fans who pay a lot of money to come watch me play and give them a specific reason of why I’m not playing today,” said Bautista.

They owe it to the hitters in the batter’s box, too.

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