Bench clearing brawls are bad for baseball

It's not fun, it's just sad.

The New York Mets have been hit by pitches 19 times in 20 games so far this season, six more than the second place Baltimore Orioles. After adding five more in their series against the Cardinals, the Mets hitters are understandably frustrated that they are getting hit.

Tuesday night the tensions reached another level when Kodi Whitley hit Mets designated hitter Pete Alonso in the helmet with an 84-mph changeup. It was a game that had already see five hit batters, three of them Mets. And it wasn’t the first time that Alonso has been hit in the helmet this year even. Visibly frustrated, Alonso took his base while the Mets’ dugout, led by Max Scherzer, began chirping across the field at the Cardinals’ dugout.

Wednesday afternoon, the Cardinals had a 10-5 lead in the bottom of the 8th when Nolan Arenado came to the plate to face Yoan Lopez. Arenado was 3-for-3 on the day and had been in the middle of pretty much all the Cardinals’ run scoring rallies. Lopez’s first pitch—a 94-mph fastball—came in high in front of Arenado’s eyes and Arenado started jawing at Lopez about the pitch. The result was something that more resembled the Mets charging the plate than Arenado charging the mound.

The benches are already cleared here and Arenado hasn’t taken more than a step or two onto the field. Mets players have gone much further from where they’re supposed to be than Arenado has.

The result was Arenado being ejected, Stubby Clapp gets ejected for aggressively pulling Alonso out of the scrum, and Lopez stayed in the game.

The Mets pleaded ignorance after the game about it’s intentionality, but they have to. If they were to admit that it was done intentionally, they’d be penalized. Certainly their reaction following Alonso’s hit on Tuesday suggested that they wanted retaliation.

There are a lot of people who seem to love wheen this happens and the benches clear. It does produce a lot of fun GIFs, like Giovanny Gallegos risking it all to jump out of the bullpen over the bullpen fence or the 5’8” Stubby Clapp taking down 6’3” Pete Alonso. But I hate it. It’s not good for baseball, and it’s really not good for any of the players who go out there.

For the most part, these become shoving matches. Everyone gets in a blob and just shoves and yells. But all it takes is one person to push a little too hard and it triggers reactions like dominos. Every time the benches clear my first memory is seeing Johnny Cueto getting pinned up against the netting behind home plate and kicking Jason LaRue and effectively ending LaRue’s career. Nothing about that is praiseworthy and neither is putting players in the position where that’s a possibility.

So how do we eliminate this from the game? We need the umpires or the league or someone to actually mete out a punishment, because right now they don’t. And it leaves one team feeling like they’ve been done wrong and their only recourse is to make it right themselves.

On Tuesday, Alonso gets hit in the head and the umpires warn both teams and the pitcher who threw the ball stays in the game.

On Wednesday, Arenado takes exception to a pitch around his head and he gets ejected while the pitcher who threw the ball stays in the game.

Things get left out of balance because there is no punishment for it. No risk. So players take it upon themselves to create a risk for the other team. You hit our guys, we hit you back. It’s like a cold war.

Both teams throwing at each other and the benches clearing are bad for baseball.

I’d put two rules in place, and I’ve supported these for years.

First, any player who is not in the game who sets foot on the field is automatically ejected. We don’t need bench players, support staff, and relievers running on the field to risk escalating the situation. The NBA uses a similar rule about players who leave the bench area in similar circumstances.

Second, any hit batter above the shoulder is an automatic ejection. If you cannot control your pitches, you do not need to be on the mound. I’d even mix in that your second hit batter in an appearance is an automatic ejection as well.

I’d even go as far as to suggest that any hit batter above the shoulder should also carry a minimum suspension as well. It’s not about intention. It’s about outcome. And hitting batters in the head is not an outcome we want, regardless of whether you meant to or not.

The only way to solve this is to create consequences for the pitcher based on the outcome and hopefully they’ll learn to control their stuff so that it doesn’t happen.

Because when the benches clear and the mob starts shoving, it doesn’t take too much for things to get out of hand real fast and something happen that causes an even bigger problem. Just ask Jason LaRue.