Certain recent whispers have had the Royals thinking the once-unthinkable and moving Yordano Ventura. Yahoo! Sports's Jeff Passan cites a pair of unidentified executives saying the Royals have offered Ventura in trade talks over the past month. The issue isn't Ventura's arm or stuff, it's his head and the 5-year-old mind inside, a mind exposed further Tuesday in Baltimore.
Anyone with eyes to see could tell Ass Ventura had Manny Machado targeted from just about the word "go." Or at least, from the moment Machado teed off Monday night for a home run off Kelvim Herrera, helping the Orioles to a 4-1 win. When Machado hit in the second Tuesday, Ventura busted him inside and tight twice, then jawed at the Oriole third baseman as Machado trotted up the first base line on his fly out.
Clearly Ventura was looking for trouble. And just as clearly, he found it when Machado batted in the fifth Tuesday. He threw the hardest fastball he could muster right into Machado's ribs. What a surprise that Machado stepped forward out of the batter's box, chucked his batting helmet off to one side, and charged Ventura, landing a hearty blow or two to the pitcher's head before they both went down in a heap as both benches and bullpens poured out to the mound.
"You know," said Royals manager Ned Yost after the game, "Ventura, in Manny's (earlier) at-bat, was pitching him in. Obviously, he didn't like it. I don't know who's at fault there." Don't buy it for one minute. Because Yost has also said that, yes, a good number of his players are actually getting fed up with Ventura's schtick.
This was not Noah Syndergaard opening a World Series contest by sending the Royals' plate-crowding Alcides Escobar a first-pitch brushback. This was not a pitcher sending a return message after a mate got knocked down or plowed on an infield play.
"To see Yost, then, admit Royals players 'probably' were frustrated by Ventura's actions - well, that's as close to a public rebuke as Yost, a die-hard players manager, ever will come," Passan writes. Probably? Royals catcher Salvador Perez, who takes a back seat to few when it comes to protecting his pitchers, looked like he could afford to wait for the next bus downtown when Machado took the drill and bolted for the mound.
"The talent is all there," Orioles outfielder Adam Jones said of Ass Ventura after the game, "but between the ears there's a circuit board off balance."
The Orioles' circuit boards were anything but off balance despite the scrum. Not only did they keep the Royals to one measly run on a bases-loaded walk in the fourth, but they wasted no time abusing former mate Chien-Ming Wang, who succeeded Ventura after he and Machado were ejected. Mark Trumbo worked Wang to a 3-1 count before hitting the next one over the center field fence. Chris Davis came up next and didn't wait, blasting Wang's first service into the left field seats.
That made it 8-1, Orioles. Jones himself drove home the final coffin nail an inning later, hitting a 1-1 service over the left center field wall. The Royals had only two baserunners the rest of the way and none got past first base.
Unlike Rangers reliever Matt Bush when he was stupid enough to drill Jose Bautista last month at the last minute in their last set against the Blue Jays for the season, and over a seven-month-old act at that, Ventura and Machado do have a history. Last September, Ventura drilled Machado in a game. Then he had the audacity to proclaim Machado the offender, that "everyone" knows "how he is," or some such buncombe.
Last year, Ventura worked three straight starts early on and started bench-clearing incidents in all three. They only began when Ventura took umbrage to Mike Trout, staring him down after Trout ripped a single up the pipe, as if Trout had targeted him with malice aforethought, then started a beef with the Angels' superman as he crossed the plate on a subsequent hit abetted by an outfield lapse. As if Trout had no business even thinking about--wait for it!--scoring a run when the opportunity arose.
They continued when Ventura drilled Oakland's Brett Lawrie the day after Lawrie angered a few Royals with a hard takeout slide late in a game that injured shortstop Escobar. The problem? Ventura didn't send the message pitch Lawrie's first time up. He waited until Lawrie batted again, following Josh Reddick whacking a three-run homer, to drill Lawrie. Even the umpires weren't all that shocked when the benches and pens cleared as Lawrie took his base calmly. Ventura got ejected post haste for that one.
And then came a classic something-out-of-nothing incident in Ventura's very next start, against the White Sox, when Adam Eaton grounded out right back to the pitcher, and Ventura was fool enough to jaw at the since-retired Eaton as he ran up the line. An ump and a coach restrained Eaton as both benches cleared.
Then, come August, Ventura started a rhetorical war with Bautista, after a game in which Ventura didn't figure but two Jays got drilled and Josh Donaldson got brushed back too tightly, causing tempers to flare and the Royals to act laughably and pathetically as though they'd been the victims. Ventura was the nastiest. He leveled a pair of tweets in which he called a six-time all-star a nobody, and "You're gonna get it from me for being fresh."
There was a time when the Royals looked like the bullies of the league instead of a great team last season, and Ventura was the leading reason why. Cooler heads among his teammates and the team's followers are praying someone finds a way to keep his mouth shut and his mind on the strike zone and not batters' heads, since the Royals face the Jays on the Fourth of July.
"Expecting that, of course, would be hoping for too much," Passan observes wryly, "because Ventura is the anti-monk. He long ago forsook self-control and chuckled at asceticism and made a career of it anyway, that great were his gifts."
The Royals have enough troubles being on a six-game losing streak and playing .500 ball in their last twelve, at this writing, not to mention falling into a second-place tie with the Tigers, each 2.5 games back of the Indians. They don't need to be dragged further down. It may be time for them to move Ventura along, even in an addition-by-subtraction deal.
Because the next time Ass Ventura decides to throw at someone for reasons making as much sense as the average politician, when his apparent nature calls, they might be shocked to see fewer of his teammates in a big hurry to protect him.
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