Yordano Ventura and Manny Machado throw haymakers in Orioles’ beat down of Royals

Let’s not let last nights brawl cloud what should be our real thoughts about Yordano Ventura and the team. Ventura got into another fight on the diamond last night with slugger Manny Machado. To be fair the fight was not all his fault. Machado has to wear some of the blame as well.For those who don’t know what I’m talking about: Check out @JeffPassan’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/740344451273367552?s=09

Yordano missed with a fastball inside on Machado earlier in the game that Machado did not appreciate. He would then hit a high fly ball and posed like he hit a homerun. As he jogged toward first base he stared down Ventura and started jawing at him in spanish. ESPN reporter Pedro Gomez translated what Machado said as “Don’t throw inside to me”. Last time I checked you can’t tell the pitcher how to pitch to you. The pitcher has ever right to throw any pitch at any time in any location. The next time Machado came up Ventura went inside again and plunked Machado and it was on. Machado charged the mound and Ventura threw his glove and his hat to the dirt and accepted the challenged. Both have history of being short tempered. Royals fans remember the exchange Ventura had with Mike Trout when he got in Trout’s face last year. who outweighed him by at least 50 lbs. He’s been ejected 3 times in his short 4 year career. Machado also has history as a hot head and has some maturity issues. These are guys that are 23 and 25. You can chalk this fight up to two guys who are young and immature compared to the rest of their teammates. Machado shouldn’t have been barking at Ventura, and honestly Ventura didn’t do anything wrong when you consider the unwritten rule of baseball. If a star hitter shows you up and acts like a punk by trying to tell you where to pitch him, that guy gets hit. We’ve seen it happen over and over in the history of baseball. The difference here is that Yordano has a track record and most importantly he’s not good. Quite frankly Ventura is awful right now. He carries himself like a star pitcher. He has supreme confidence in his ability. His confidence and the results aren’t matching up. His team was losing because of him. 13 pitches into his night and the team was down by four runs. We don’t need Ventura to teach guys lessons. What Ventura did was selfish. He could’ve likely put his own teammates in harms way because as we know baseball polices itself. The “If you hit us we’re going to hit you” mentality could bite Lorenzo Cain or Eric Hosmer. What if a Baltimore pitcher goes inside to hit one of our best players and he misses and hits him in the wrist? That could end a players season. These are the facts Ventura did not think about before he decided to handle a problem by throwing at one of the top five players in the league. We need Yordano to pitch well. Right now the team is struggling. Six straight losses and an offense that has scored one run in five straight games is the reality of the Royals situation right now. They don’t need to lose another player to suspension which is likely going to be the outcome for Ventura. The Royals need all the good fortune they can get. So put last night aside, the Royals need a win. Maybe last nights brawl will ignite the team and get them going again.