Andy Green is soft, has no business being a major league manager and represents all that is wrong with San Diego sports.
At least on Twitter, the rectal thermometer of our social consciousness, Padres fans seemingly by the legion diagnosed Green thusly for not ordering/allowing his starting pitcher to drill the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo with the first pitch of Tuesday night’s game in Chicago.
And here I thought no one could say anything more ridiculous than Joe Maddon’s defense of Rizzo.
“What he did was right, absolutely right,” the Chicago manager said on Monday night after Rizzo slid wide of the plate and crashed into Padres catcher Austin Hedges. “There’s nothing wrong with that, and nobody can tell me differently.”
Uh, no.
Hedges did everything right, allowing a path to the plate. Rizzo did everything wrong, actually veering off the baseline to essentially knee Hedges.
What Rizzo did wasn’t a slide. It was an attack. It was a Southwest plane landing at a foggy Lindbergh Field. It was practically karate.
You want to call it old-school? Fine. It was. Like going in spikes up at second base, opponents not fraternizing before games and starting pitchers who threw 200 innings every year.
But then your problem is with this particular rule. Because Rizzo’s course of action was a textbook example of a violation of the rule adopted in 2014 that mandates runners not divert from a direct line to the plate to collide with a catcher.
The only way you can watch a replay and conclude Rizzo didn’t try to collide with Hedges is if you are wearing a Cubs jersey and/or Cubs hat and/or call them the Cubbies.
But at least there was a smidgen of rationality in what Maddon said. He was, to some degree, right in his wrongness.
Because while MLB said Rizzo broke the rule, the Cubs’ first baseman was not fined or suspended. In fact, no one has been fined or suspended for violating this particular rule.
So, it turns out, Rizzo did the right thing. At worst, it can be argued he did if we set aside the letter of the law, common decency and good sportsmanship in the name of trying to win. And we do value winning. (In some cities, they really do.)
The throw from center field beat Rizzo by two steps. Hedges had the ball and was set up perfectly. Rizzo was out. Other than some sort of acrobatic chicanery, Rizzo’s best chance to be safe was to dislodge the ball from Hedges’ grasp.
This is MLB’s error. If the only penalty for Rizzo going out of the path was to be called out, which was the result of the play when Hedges held onto the ball, then there was essentially no risk in breaking this rule other than the risk of injury.
Maddon knows this as surely as he knows Rizzo was not on a direct line to the plate. Maddon is defending his player, which is what managers do. There is tangible benefit in this.
Those angry at Green for the Padres not throwing at Rizzo on Tuesday can’t provide a tangible benefit of doing so.
Showing Hedges his manager and teammates have his back? That assumes Hedges thinks they don’t.
It also presupposes that the act of hitting Rizzo is a courageous and effective form of vengeance. Again, not to discount baseball’s beloved “old-school” code or its “unwritten rules,” but we ought to be willing to evolve when sense prevails.
Rizzo has been hit by 12 pitches this year, second-most in the majors. He was hit 30 times two years ago, most of anyone that season. Oooooh. It was really going to show him to plunk him again on Tuesday.
“This is what I’ve always asked: What do you accomplish by hitting somebody?” Green said on Tuesday. “You accomplish nothing. You put a man on first base, and you give them an opportunity to win a baseball game. … You don’t, all of a sudden, gain the high moral ground because you chose to retaliate. You don’t, all of a sudden, get to pound your chest because you were man enough to throw a ball at somebody’s back. I think it’s absolutely asinine to even take that approach.”
Now, Jhoulys Chacin negated a portion of that argument when he sailed his second pitch down the middle of the plate at 93 mph so Rizzo could swat it out of the park. While Green was insisting Chacin not hit Rizzo in a Tuesday afternoon meeting, he should have demanded he make good pitches, too.
What a terrible manager to leave that part out of the instructions. (That was written in invisible sarcasm font, by the way.)
Green did the right thing, all factors considered.
For one, Green was asked by MLB to not initiate any retaliation. The league has had a couple ugly brawls this year and is not keen on more bad blood that lingers and possibly gets players hurt.
Be sure that Maddon and the Cubs would have struck back at some point had Rizzo been hit. I suspect the cagey Maddon was telegraphing that when he said before Tuesday’s game that he didn’t expect the Padres to retaliate and to do so would be “egregious.” That’s how Maddon operates.
The Padres started the season as a bad team and can’t afford any more bad breaks, like a player getting hurt when a “message” pitch goes too high or a benches-clearing melee turns into something more than usual banal pushing and shoving. It would be nice for Wil Myers to avoid the DL for a second straight season.
Also, the idea the Padres had nothing to lose by retaliating because 2017 is not about wins and losses is misguided. This season is assuredly not about the team’s place in the standings, but the manager is trying to teach his team how to win.
Does Green — or anyone else on the staff or in the lineup — look like someone who isn’t invested in every pitch? No. On the contrary, it is impressive how engaged Green is and how many machinations he makes to try to affect games that really don’t matter in the standings.
Look, it is true I really like Green. But he is not infallible. We can pile on when he does something that costs the Padres a game or — worse — outrageously influences the course of the Padres’ culture.
This wasn’t one of those times.
Green is not soft. Come on, no one that short can do what he has done, playing in the majors, and be soft. He would, in fact, beat the tar out of most of the keyboard pugilists that believe he lacks a spine.
Fortunately for them, Green doesn’t believe in retaliation.