Farnsworth to Be Suspended
According to Peter Abraham, Yankees reliever Kyle Farnsworth will receive a 3 game suspension for throwing at Manny Ramirez in Thursday night’s game. Farnsworth threw a 96 mph heater behind Ramriez’s head in the 7th inning the other night, which drew an angry reaction, not from the Red Sox, but rather the talking heads in the media. Ramirez himself didn’t seem that upset by it, and he even acknowledged that the Red Sox hit A-Rod on Wednesday night, so he wasn’t overly surprised by the close call from Farnsworth. But of course such an incident will draw the ire of MLB discipline czar Bob Watson, who will come down strongly against headhunting.
I’m not that upset by this suspension. I have no problem with pitchers throwing at batters, in fact I think it should be done more often. But what I do not like is pitching up and around the head, that’s dangerous. I have no doubt that Farnsworth was throwing at Manny, but what I’m not sure about is that he was headhunting. Farnsworth doesn’t exactly have pinpoint command. The only spot that he can consistently hit is the sweet spot on the bat, not a specific location in the strike zone. He couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, much less Manny Ramirez’s head. But either way, I guess precedent says he deserves this suspension, so that’s fine with me.
To be honest, three games without Farnsworth isn’t exactly a punishment to the Yankees, so I’m OK with this whole thing. The only thing that annoys me is the indignation and outrage from the “righteous” sports media after this incident. Please, get off your high horse and focus your outrage on more important things.
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Filed under: MLB - Yankees, Writer - Bill Slattery
[...] Farnsworth’s suspension has been cut from three games to one game. You might recall that Krazy Kyle was suspended last month after throwing at Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez. The issue was that the pitch was behind Manny’s head, which is a big no-no in baseball. [...]