Cole Hamels admitted to intentionally plunking Bryce Harper in Sunday night's Phillies vs. Nationals game. He said it was a "welcome to the big leagues" moment. Monday, MLB announced that Hamels would be fined an undisclosed amount and suspended for 5 games. Awesome.
Oh wait, not awesome. Because Hamels is a starting pitcher, and due to the way the Phillies schedule works out, he probably won't miss a single start. While he is scheduled to start on Saturday, the team has Thursday off, and Roy Halladay is pitching tonight. So Halladay could pitch Saturday on regular rest and Hamels can take his regular turn in the rotation on Sunday. This is ridiculous.
But what about the fine you may ask. Hamels base salary this year is $15 million. So unless MLB slaps down an insane amount like $5 million, which they won't, he will relatively go unpunished. While I'm all for pitching inside, protecting your teammates, and backing guys off the plate, this is just stupid. Basically what MLB is saying is, go ahead and hit whoever you want, it's only going to cost you a few thousand dollars. Thanks for nothing MLB.
Whoever is in charge of issuing suspension needs to seriously reconsider the policy on suspending starting pitchers for things like this. Instead of 5 games, make 3 scheduled starts. I'm sure teams would find a way around this as well, but at least it wouldn't be as insulting to the fans intelligence.
*UPDATE* Now being reported the total fine will come to $409,835. While this is a big number, when it's all said and done, it doesn't really effect the team or Hamels.
Follow me on Twitter- @TwittinSports
No comments:
Post a Comment