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What started as a young pitcher standing up to baseball’s best hitter has turned into a very dangerous situation in Kansas City. Pitcher Yordano Ventura exchanged some words with slugger Mike Trout earlier in the season, which caused a bit of a yelling match.
Things got more serious when the Kansas City Royals took on the Oakland Athletics from Kansas City last week. A’s infielder Brett Lawrie was thrown at by Ventura, who yelled at him and caused the benches to clear. This came after Lawrie slid hard with spikes high into Royals’ shortstop Alcides Escobar, spraining his knee.
The situation got heated with the Athletics and poured over into the next day. Sure, in those two situations, Ventura was defending himself against baseball’s best hitter to show he wouldn’t back down, and he was retaliating against Lawrie in a way he thought was protecting his teammate. However, his latest stunt is starting a trend that could only put his teammates in further danger.
On Thursday night, Chicago White Sox outfielder Adam Eaton grounded a hard two-hopper right back at Ventura, who gloved it and threw to first. As he was walking toward first to throw it to Eric Hosmer, he shouted at Eaton, who shouted back. Once again, benches cleared and this time it got serious.
Punches were thrown, and there was all-out mayhem by first base as both teams took shots at each other. This situation was uncalled for as there was no reason for Ventura to be yelling at Eaton after a hard-hit ground ball. If Ventura keeps acting like this, other teams are going to take it out on the entire Royals team, not just him.
That means hitters could be thrown at in retaliation. Obviously, that’s not what you want if you’re the Royals. Manager Ned Yost needs to sit the young pitcher down and talk him through these points. If he doesn’t, people will be distracted from Ventura’s immense talent (he averaged the fastest fastball velocity in baseball last season as a rookie) and will only focus on the fact he keeps picking fights.
