Major League Baseball and Double Standards

Full disclosure: I fully expected Rougned Odor to earn himself a suspension for his role in Sunday's on-field brawl with the Toronto Blue Jays and Jose Bautista. 8 games seems reasonable enough, with the assumption being that he can potentially reduce that by a few games on appeal.

What I also expected, however, was a bit less of a double standard by Major League Baseball.

For starters, we're talking about a league that relished every second of the whole ordeal. They even published and showcased video of the incident on their Website. Forget MLB.TV customers needing to go back into the archives to find it within the game, the league had its people decide it would be better to cut that footage out and showcase it in a video all on its own. Then hand down fines and suspensions to the players involved while simultaneously thriving in the river of attention the sport gained from it. If that's not a double standard, I don't know what is.

And now we get to the fun part: The actual punishments. As I've mentioned, Odor's falls pretty much in line with what many of us expected. It's maybe a bit on the high side for my liking, but again, comes down upon appeal. Probably.

Jose Bautista getting one game? I can't wrap my head around it. Consider for a moment the slide that came before the entire brawl. It was deemed illegal; against MLB's new slide rules that have been implemented this year. Say what you want about Odor being a culprit of this himself at times, but I was happy that these are being phased out. Much like headhunting in the NFL, it's a dangerous play that stuck around for far too long. Many still don't like the rule change, but if it were a Clayton Kershaw or Mike Trout taking these slides, that tune would surely change.

Bautista had already cost the Blue Jays a game with such a slide earlier this season. He knew the slide was illegal, but didn't care. He had one mission on his mind: He was pissed off at getting plunked minutes before, and he wanted to make that known to Rougned Odor, who had absolutely nothing to do with him getting plunked in the first place. He cared so little about anything going on the field that he decided, game results be damned, he'd rather let the Rangers know how pissed off he was at them.

So, we have intent and aggression with an illegal slide, and that's before baseball's biggest diva decided he'd go ahead and get up and pretend he wanted to be a tough guy. Rougned Odor's punch was solid and squared up, but I'm not sure what people though Bautista was preparing to do by cocking his fists and pulling one back while having an arm already extended in the way a fighter does in preparation to hit their opponent.

Essentially, MLB is saying that because Rougned Odor literally beat him to the punch, he's the "worse" guy in all of this. And it's mind-boggling.

Elvis Andrus got the same suspension -- one game -- as Jose Bautista. Andrus gets as much as the instigator of the entire ordeal; the man with whom none of this happens without.

Kevin Pillar and Josh Donaldson, who were running around like madmen and throwing themselves into guys? No suspension.

Toronto's manager, John Gibbons, who had already been ejected from the game but headed onto the field from the clubhouse anyway? Three games.

There's zero rhyme or reason behind any of it. It's almost as if MLB decided to to draw numbers to determine the appropriate punishments, and now the Rangers will clearly wear the brunt of this because they had one player who was, simply, quicker and better at punching than the guy in front of him.

I'm not saying there's an intentional bias here, but something has obviously gone wrong. And because there's no sound reasoning behind it, I can't figure out exactly what that is. Except that Major League Baseball botched this one.

The Rangers Are 22-17

That was possibly one of the least entertaining games I've seen all season.

• Derek Holland took the mound in the series opener in Oakland, and overall, he was solid enough, I suppose. From a results standpoint, 6 innings with 2 earned runs is always good. From a peripherals standpoint, 1 strikeout isn't too good. And it was the lack of a real strikeout threat that eventually allowed the A's to put up 2 runs in the bottom of the 4th inning. After inducing a flyball from Coco Crisp for the first out of the inning, Derek ended up loading the bases. A sacrifice fly from Khris someone-tell-him-his-name-is-spelled-wrong Davis and Billy Butler single made it 2-0 A's, and really, they didn't need anything else.
   
• The Rangers offense, a day after being full of punches, was punchless tonight. Only four hits total, as well as six total baserunners. Early on, I thought perhaps Jeff Banister took a stray punch yesterday that somehow had him thinking that putting Elvis Andrus back in Ron Washington's favorite spot, the two-hole, was a great idea. Oddly enough, Elvis had a hit and a walk, so he wasn't the problem. And other Adrian Beltre and Ian Desmond singles as well as a Ryan Rua double, there wasn't much to get excited about in this one.
   
• Luke Jackson, called up to replace Tom Wilhelmsen in the bullpen, pitched tonight. And while he gave up a solo home run to Danny Valencia in the bottom of the 7th -- while rocking some sort of retro mop hairstyle -- he was effective.
   
• It was only one game, but it feels like it's always a miserable experience watching games in Oakland. Maybe it's the constant drumming and vuvuzela blowing in the background. Maybe it's the terribly large foul territory. Or maybe it's just that it feels like Texas never plays well in Oakland. Whatever it is, I'll be glad when this series is over.
   
• They'll do it again tomorrow night, this time sending Cole Hamels to the mound. Here's hoping that the bats show up this time around.

Rougned Odor and Texas Legends

Up until a few years ago when things got a bit icy between Nolan Ryan and the current ownership group, heading out to a Rangers game almost certainly included a video montage on the big screen pre-game. Oftentimes, even if you weren't paying attention, you knew exactly what was going on by the roar of the crowd. The clip of Nolan Ryan holding Robin Ventura in a headlock and punching him relentlessly was surely playing.

And for years, that was the defining moment for the Texas Rangers. Not Kenny Rogers throwing a perfect game. Not the division titles that came even in the years before the Rangers managed to go the World Series. A 46-year old pitcher taking on a 26-year old "kid", and not only living tell of it, but making an iconic moment out of it.

It's Ryan, who pitched but five of his 27 big league seasons in a Texas uniform, who has the statue in Arlington. Sure, part of that may be due to him throwing two no-hitters during his Rangers tenure, but make no mistake: The fight is the real reason that fans long remembered Ryan as a Rangers icon".

And occasionally, when the Rangers would substitute "Texas Legends" in for the dot race, there he was. A caricature of Nolan Ryan -- named the "Ryan Express" -- was there racing alongside such historic figures as Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and Sam Houston.

Now it appears that, only a day after Rougned Odor bobblehead day at the ballpark, the Rangers just might need to think about turning Odor into a plush caricature with which to rile up the crowd at home games. If Nolan Ryan going to town on Ventura's face was big in the 90's, just imagine how long Odor taking on Jose Bautista -- and Josh Donaldson, for that matter -- will stick around in the age of social media and viral content.

First things first: I don't care about a bat flip. No, I wasn't a huge fan of Jose Bautista's bat flip in the 2015 ALDS-clinching game. That's not my personal preference, but if it had been "my guy" doing the bat-flipping, I'd have probably loved every second of it.

So going into this season, I wasn't much a fan of any sort of "revenge". Especially after Robinson Chirinos took a ball to the forearm that knocked him out for half the season, beaning guys just for revenge seemed, at best, a risky proposition.

And Matt Bush wouldn't have been my pick to enact that revenge, either. Here's why I don't think the call came from Jeff Banister:

Bush, just over six months removed from prison, is still adjusting to life on the outside. I say this with the disclaimer that the following isn't simply wild speculation. It's something I have on pretty good authority from someone I trust. Beyond an ongoing fight with alcohol addiction, Bush spent over three years in an entirely different world. One where you're expected to step up and have the backs of your "people", or else. It's never pretty, and it's not something we often like to acknowledge. Nonetheless, it's assuredly still in his mind, and he felt like it was something he needed to do. Consider his post-game comments, when asked if he knew of the Bautista's bat-flip in 2015:

“Yeah, I mean, it was a memorable game. I was really hoping we could pull it off. Rooting for the Rangers the whole way. I really wish we could have won that game, but it’s just amazing to be a part of this team and to be able to go out there and beat Toronto.”

Bush, of course, wasn't even on the team in 2015. He wasn't on any team in 2015. And yet, there he stood, talking like a guy who loves being a part of an organization that gave him a second chance. Was he suggested to do so by a member of the bullpen? Probably. But I'd also say it isn't out of the realm of possibilities that, given all of the above, he simply decided to take matters into his own hands. In either scenario, I'm not sure he needed too much convincing to throw at Bautista.

And again, I don't necessarily like it. In the situation, I definitely didn't like it. It put the tying run on base late in a close game. That said, through all of the intentional/unintentional talk, the fact that Bush placed the pitch exactly where you'd ideally want a "payback pitch" at least lends credence to the idea that the ball didn't just slip out of his hand. When asked if it was a purpose pitch?

“I don’t have any comment on that.”

And now we come to the tough part of the discussion. The legal/illegal slide issue is one Toronto has been wrapped up in on numerous occasions in 2016, and for his part, Rougned Odor has been involved in his fair share of questionable slides. That he was upset at Bautista's deep slide on a double play ball was no surprise.

In fact, that's the kind of player Odor is. That's who Bautista is. The unstoppable force and immovable object paradox. Something had to give. And when two fiery players get heated with one another, things have a tendency to boil over. In this case, it involved both guys going at each other, both cocking their fists in anticipation, and Odor beating Bautista to the punch, literally.

And while I may not like all of the strategy that went into it, as a Rangers fan, it's hard not to love the results. It's no state secret that Jose Bautista rubs some guys in the game the wrong way. It isn't simply the demonstrative nature or fiery passion. It's his petulant attitude when baseball doesn't go his way, a tendency to throw a tantrum when a plate appearance doesn't result in him being on base. He's long been noted as a diva and someone that makes himself easy to hate. Those things, more than just a simple bat flip, end up adding up and rubbing guys the wrong way. So in that sense, Odor was merely doing what 98% of the rest of baseball have wanted to see happen; finally give the man a reason to back up those tantrums, that fake tough guy persona, and "playing the game the right way with a fiery passion."

If you're a Blue Jays fan calling it a suckerpunch, I'm sorry, but that's not right either. As Brandon McCarthy so eloquently put it on Twitter: Are we to believe that Bautista was cocking his fists and winding up to tickle Odor? It just so happens that the younger, smaller player was able to strike first. It tends to happen in a fight.

The fact is, until MLB actually puts some sort of rule in place about retaliation, these things will continue to happen. And given the kind of buzz Sunday's game surely generated for baseball, it's not something they'll likely be in any hurry to "fix" anytime soon. Is it a good look? Probably not. But they'll save face publicly by issuing suspensions where needed -- even as they sensationalize the entire thing on their own online media platform -- and that will be that as far as the national "outrage" is concerned.

For Texas, however, Rougned Odor just morphed himself into something more than a 22-year old second baseman for the Texas Rangers. In the eyes of many, he'll end up going down as a Texas legend, and it wouldn't surprise me too terribly to see his solid right hook as part of a video montage at the ballpark in the coming years.

The Rangers Are 22-16

Well, that escalated quickly.

• In case you missed it, the Rangers came back from behind to win 7-6, and took the series from the Toronto Blue Jays. This, of course, won't end up being the big takeaway from this game.
   
• In the top of the 8th inning, after getting a lead, Matt Bush sent a 98 mph fastball that hit Jose Bautista in the ribs. It's unclear whether or not it was intentional, but given the game situation, it'd be odd if it had been. Bautista initially looked ready to charge the mound, but apparently though better of it and went down to first base.
   
• He didn't, however, thinking better of trying a takeout slide on Rougned Odor on a double play ball. Of course, Blue Jays fans will swear Odor was in the wrong. Rangers fans will swear Bautista was in the wrong. Odor clocked Bautista pretty solidly on the jaw before Adrian Beltre managed to step in and wrap his fellow countryman up to prevent him from enduring anymore facial damage.
   
• Was Odor over the top? Probably. Am I surprised it took this long for Rougned Odor to get into an actual fight in the bigs? Very. That said, it's the price Bautista has to be willing to pay for constantly playing with his emotions on his sleeve. Forgetting the bat flip in last year's playoffs, he's constantly seen acting like petulant child when things don't go his way, and overall, it just isn't fun to watch him play. So yeah, when he goes in hard to take a guy out at second base, I don't really have a problem if that player has something to say about it. Even if it did go a bit far.
   
• And now, the downside: Odor is almost certainly looking at some sort of suspension when the dust from all of this settles. That sucks.
   
• Now that the whole ballpark cheered for a player getting the crap knocked out of him, Toby Mac, a Christian hip-hop artist, is putting on a post-game concert. You can't make this stuff up.

The Rangers Are 20-15

Your Texas Rangers just took a series from the AL-best Chicago White Sox.

• Cole Hamels started today, and early on, it seemed like the White Sox would struggle to score a single run while he was on the mound. Unfortunately, to lead of the top of the 3rd inning, Dioner Navarro hit a ball straight back at Hamels. After the ball initially hit him right in the glove, it hit the ground. Hamels hurriedly picked the ball up and made a rushed throw in the general direction of Mitch Moreland at first base. Instead of recording an out on the play, the ball got by Moreland, and Navarro was standing on second with no outs. Austin Jackson singled him in later in the inning.
   
• Ian Desmond had himself a game from the two-hole, and in the bottom of the 3rd inning, he drove in Ryan Rua with a single. After Nomar Mazara hit a sacrifice fly to center field to score Rougned Odor, it was 2-1 Texas, and it seemed like handing Hamels a lead would be the end of it.
   
• Todd Frazier -- who later left the game after diving into the stands and mangling his face on the stadium seating -- led of the 4th inning with a solo home run. Melky Cabrera followed up with a single, and Brett Lawrie hit a home run of his own, making it 4-2 Chicago.
   
• Prince Fielder had two doubles on the day, the most important coming in the bottom of the 5th inning, driving in Ian Desmond and Nomar Mazara, and tying up the game.
   
• After giving up another run in the top of the 6th inning to make it 5-4 Chicago, Cole Hamels saw his day end. From there, Tony Barnette came into the game to bridge things to the bottom half of the inning.
   
• Suddenly, in the bottom of the 6th, the Texas bats came alive. Ryan Rua, who is certainly making a case to have expanded playing time, singled to lead off the Texas half of the inning, then promptly stealing second. Ian Desmond ended up driving him in to tie the game, followed by a Nomar Mazara single. Adrian Beltre -- who else? -- drove Desmond in to give the Rangers a 6-5 advantage.
   
• The bullpen did its job today. After Barnette, Tom Wilhelmsen, Jake Diekman, and Sam Dyson each pitched an inning, cumulatively allowing only two hits and a walk over the final three innings of the game, and closing out a 6-5 win and a Rangers victory.
   
• So, after sweeping the series in Detroit, Texas won a tough series at home, and now has an off day tomorrow before welcoming in Toronto for a weekend series. Winning baseball is fun baseball.