To believe that Matt Barnes was not trying to hit Manny Machado on Sunday afternoon, well, let’s go through it:
— Barnes and his Red Sox manager, John Farrell, insisted the ball got away from the reliever as he was trying to come inside on the Orioles’ best player. But catcher Christian Vazquez was set up off the plate outside. So Vazquez was not down with the go-inside portion of the program, if Barnes and Farrell are being honest.
— To believe Barnes (and Farrell), you would have to accept that perhaps the most inaccurate pitch of 2017 happened to occur with Machado up for likely the last time in this contentious three-game series. Machado spiked Boston second baseman Dustin Pedroia in the opener, ushering in two days of anticipation for when frontier justice was going to strike. I mean, what a coincidence that it was Machado’s head that the 90-mph pitch barely missed.
— And then, of course, there was Pedroia doing what nobody could remember a player ever doing. In the immediate aftermath of the ball hitting the bat behind Machado’s head and Barnes being ejected, the Red Sox second baseman yelled clearly to Machado that he had not ordered this baseball version of a Code Red. Then he texted Machado to extend the same sentiment. And then after the game, he said the situation was “mishandled.”
Pedroia is as competitive any player with the reputation as a great teammate, yet in this situation he didn’t throw Barnes under the bus as much as drive the bus. Then put it in reverse back over Barnes and — more importantly — this whole way of conducting on-field retribution.
Pedroia was willing to take this unprecedented action. But MLB stuck with precedent for the length of a suspension for a reliever in such instances, banning Barnes for four games. I thought a stronger statement needed to be made, that this is no longer a tolerable way to behave on a baseball field.
Barnes did something that threatened Machado’s career — maybe more than that — so in exchange any suspension might feel too inadequate. But 25 games would scream it is time to stop this on-field nonsense.
Would the Players Association have fought what would be a ban exceedingly longer than standard? You bet they would. It is the union’s responsibility to defend its members and to not let the Commissioner’s Office set precedent. But Machado also is a member of the union, and he needs defending here, as well.
Also, the union has come on board to help change slide rules at second and collision rules at the plate in the name of protecting its members. This should be a trigger to do the same to minimize pitchers heaving a ball in the vicinity of a fellow player’s head.
I know, I know, this will upset a sect who will claim I don’t understand the unwritten rules of the game or that this is the continuation of the softening of baseball and this country. But I would dare say Pedroia has forgotten more about baseball and its written and unwritten rules than anyone typing these words or reading them ever knew, and he publicly scolded Barnes in every way possible. As for toughness, Pedroia all but defines it in its on-field form, forging a potential Hall of Fame career out of a 5-foot-6 frame. And this mighty mite did not see what Barnes did as tough. He saw it as stupid.
If the Red Sox felt retribution for Pedroia being spiked by Machado was necessary — and I actually believe it was unintentional, more clumsy than malicious — then an eye-for-an-eye in this case is not throwing the ball near the actual eye of Machado. MLB must do all it can to legislate such dangerous behavior from the game.
As for the defense that this is always the way the game has been played and stop trying to change the sport: Well, there was a time when not allowing players of color to participate was the way the game was always played. There was a time when leeches were put on a sick person’s stomach to cure them. Enlightenment means learning from the past and making improvements. And it is not enlightened to keep letting the Matt Barnes of the world heave what amounts to a deadly object toward the head of another human being.