MLB Daily: Yordano Ventura vs. the World; the Subway Series Is Actually Worth Watching This Year, Who is Matt Carpenter?

Welcome to an action-packed Friday edition of MLB Daily, where we ask the question: why can’t we all just get along with the Royals?

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT: If you were paying attention to sports on Thursday night, then you might have seen the brawl involving the White Sox and Royals — yes, them again. This was an actual fight, triggered by a couple bean balls — from lingering hostilities from the season-opening series earlier this month when Jeff Samardzija hit Lorenzo Cain, which maybe we’ll look back on as the origin story for the Fightin’ Royals — and then a very strange, if not routine sequence, when Adam Eaton hit a chopper back to Yordano Ventura that prompted words from both sides, setting off the benches-clearing brawl.

The powder keg erupted after Ventura quick pitched Eaton — who said something first before Ventura dropped an eff you.

Watch (again) if you want, because, let’s not kid ourselves baseball fights are generally amusing once the bodies start flopping all over the diamond … then again, they lose their luster when they happen on a seemingly nightly basis:

(Side note: a baseball fight is 78 percent better when the Hawk is behind the mic.)

If you’re scoring at home, that’s now three incidents that the Royals, and specifically Ventura found himself in the middle of less than a month into the season. Earlier this month, Ventura jawing with Mike Trout seemed like a strange outlier, but much less so in the wake of the Brett Lawrie stuff and what happened last night at U.S. Cellular Field. In fairness, maybe the Lawrie thing should be maybe looked at different since there was a clear trigger for the retaliation, although gunning at Lawrie’s head for two days is bush league. (That story STILL isn’t over thanks to misreported comments attributed to Albert Pujols.)

Here’s what Ventura said, through translator Jeremy Guthrie after the game, which ended with the Royals winning in extra innings. From the KC Star:

"“The last three outings, his emotions have spilled over,” said Jeremy Guthrie, translating for Ventura. “They’ve gotten the better of him. He’s an emotional pitcher. But he needs to work on controlling them, moving forward. He certainly wants to avoid the results, in terms of the way the outings have ended.”"

And from Eaton:

"“Ventura is a heck of a competitor,” Eaton said later. “I respect the heck out of him and everyone behind him. I’m a competitor as well. Sometimes boys will be boys and I think that was a situation where we had some excitement.”"

Emotions? Boys will be boys? Toughness? Family? The unwritten rules? Etc. Add it all up and the logic of baseball fights and protection/purpose pitches rarely makes sense unless you’re wearing stirrups for the appropriate team involved. My friend and colleague Stephen Douglas offered up some fine Mid-Southern Upstate New York logic that could help curb some of the unnecessary nonsense.

Watching the drama unfold last night I scribbled down on my notepad, “what does any of this accomplish?” A few minutes, and beer or two later, I went back to my pad again somehow scrawled down the same thing, “what does any of this accomplish?”

Sure there’s standing up for your teammates — the Royals are mad about being hit by a lot of pitches (17 times in 16 games), including one that sent Alex Rios to the DL with a broken hand — but the behavior over the last couple weeks from Ventura is mostly inexcusable and quite foolish in practice.

As entertaining as baseball fights tend be, if you’re participating in them the only results tend to be bad. Correct me if I’m wrong, but ejections, suspensions and possible injuries tend to be a detriment to winning, but hey, let’s send a message regardless, right? Intentionally throwing at guys, especially if you’re a pitcher in the American League, only tends to end up putting your own teammates in jeopardy because of baseball’s stupid tit-for-tat policies. If you’re the White Sox, you can’t be too thrilled Chris Sale and Samardzija — your Nos. 1-2 pitchers — are square in the middle of the fighting.

Trying to find logic or divine any greater meaning in baseball fights is a fool’s errand, mostly. The Royals actions over the course of the season speak for themselves. Unless you’re a Kansas City diehard, it’s hard to defend them either, given they’ve happened three times in the course of 20 odd days. The White Sox aren’t exactly blameless in this incident either, which is worth remembering.

That said, Ned … you might want to hold a clubhouse meeting because your team is looking petty and immature.

Counterpoint: Scoreboard — the Fightin’ Royals are an AL best 12-4.

Memory Lane: On the subject of baseball fights, it’s hard to top the White Sox-Tigers brawl from 2000 featuring wildman Robert Fick and a bloodied Keith Foulke.

I’m not sure how many think pieces about baseball that fight triggered, but it was good theater nonetheless.

Subway!: Outside of New York, few are going to care about the Mets-Yankees series, but it’s probably the best series coming this weekend. The Mets are on a franchise-best 11-game winning streak, while the left-for-dead Yankees have won seven of 10 to move over .500. ESPN airs the final game of the Series on Sunday. Jon Neise and Nathan Eovaldi pitch in that one, so you can probably get away with watching Game of Thrones and flip back to baseball and it will be in, say, the fourth inning or so.

If I were a Carpenter: If you asked me to name 50 current big league baseball players, Matt Carpenter probably wouldn’t be among them. Hell, if you put 10 players in a police lineup I’d have trouble identifying Carpenter, which is a shame since he’s quietly one of the best offensive players in the game.

Carpenter is off to a .346/.444/.684 start with three home runs and 11 runs scored in 12 games. He led baseball in runs scored two years ago and is only making $3.75 million in 2015.

Although he leads off, Carpenter isn’t what your brain thinks of as a leadoff hitter, since he only has nine steals in his career. Of course in 2015 we know that raw speed or stolen bases really don’t matter as much over the course of 162 games than on-base percentage. In a somewhat down year in 2014, Carpenter still led the league in walks with 96 and sports a lifetime .381 OBP.

Carpenter might not resonate STAR PLAYER, but his value to the Cardinals is easily recognizable.

This & That: Some guy named Bartolo Colon made this play yesterday. I almost had to run a Google search to find out who is was, fortunately it churned back 100s of results. … How quickly things change in April: the Giants swept the Dodgers, turning a woeful 4-10 record into a respectable 7-10 mark. … The Angels finished with one hit — a Kole Calhoun home run — but it was enough to beat the A’s 2-1.

[YW]

[Photo via Getty]