Many figured enough was enough when Kansas City Royals starter Yordano Ventura and reliever Kelvin Herrera intentionally threw at Oakland Athletics' third baseman Brett Lawrie and were ejected from games over the weekend. Well, the nonsense continued into Thursday night.
This time it was against the division-rival Chicago White Sox. The incident involved Ventura, yet again, who has seemingly been a troublemaker thus far into the season. On Thursday night Adam Eaton hit a hard ground ball at Ventura, who fielded it and threw the outfielder out at first base. The two were apparently exchanging words and that spilled over into a benches-clearing brawl.
Check it out below:
It all began when Ventura hit Jose Abreu with a pitch in the fourth inning. It apparently wasn't intentional because the right-hander nodded at Abreu when he was walking down to first base to make sure he was fine. However, White Sox starter Chris Sale returned the favor in the fifth inning and delivered a fastball up-and-in to Mike Moustakas, beaming Royals' third baseman. Both clubs were issued a warning from the home plate umpire.
Then after Ventura was seen jawing off to Eaton in the seventh inning, the two charged toward each other before umpires and teammates broke it up. But at that point it was too late because the benches had cleared and a number of other coaches and players exchanged words. The scuffle resulted in five ejections, including Ventura, Sale, Lorenzo Cain, Edinson Volquez and Jeff Samardzija.
Samardzija eventually charged at Cain, which really caused things to spill over, resulting in a number of players throwing punches and being taken to the ground. Samardzija and Cain got into it on Opening Day when the right-hander hit the outfielder with a fastball after giving up a home run the batter before.
But regardless of whose fault it was last night, this has been a recurring theme with the Royals and Ventura. The 23-year-old picked a fight with the reigning AL MVP Mike Trout during a series with the Los Angeles Angels earlier in April. Check it out below:
It's unknown why that went down, but perhaps it's because these two teams have some bad blood after the Royals swept the Angels in the postseason last year. Nonetheless, Ventura was seen provoking a verbal argument with Trout for no apparent reason after the outfielder got a hit off of Ventura and scored a run.
Then came the series with the Athletics. Lawrie committed a dirty breakup slide and injured Royals' shortstop Alcides Escobar, and the next day Ventura beamed Lawrie with a fastball and was immediately ejected from the contest.
Here's the slide, for which Lawrie allegedly texted Escobar to apologize (Escobar claims he never received a text):
Here's the scuffle after Ventura's pitch:
Whatever the case, Thursday marked the third benches-clearing incident involving Ventura and the Royals, and many would agree this needs to stop. We're not even three weeks into the 2015 season. Teams are not looking to fight and jeopardize their players' health as they have months left to compete.
Sure, some fights occur throughout the year, but not at this magnitude this early in the season. Such actions set a bad precedent for what' to come and if the Royals keep involving themselves in these precarious situations, someone is going to get seriously injured. Ventura has already been ejected twice and fined once this year.
Hopefully manager Ned Yost gives his boys a talk and encourages them to tone down the aggressiveness.
