Welcome to Major League Baseball, where cheaters are protected by officials and suspensions make no sense. Dodgers fans took to social media today to respond to the suspension for the Athlete’s Ramon Laureano suspension following a bench removal incident.
Like Joe Kelly’s suspension, Laureano got into trouble because she went from toe-to-toe with the Astros. Unlike Kelly, Laureano blamed the dugout and tried to fight an entire team. And yet MLB decided he should get a 6-game ban for the incident. The Dodgers’ Kelly currently has an 8-game ban.
Ramon Laureano’s suspension for loading Astros’ dugout, as @susanslusser said, is for six games.
– Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) 11 August 2020
As expected, Dodgers fans were not too happy to hear that Kelly’s suspension was longer. After all, Kelly did not hit a single player and ran away from the incident.
That a player who does not hit one stroke is stopped for 8 games, but a player who (rightly) demands a dugout and starts a brawl is only stopped for 5 games? Make sense.
– Daniel Palma (@ Daniel_Palma96) 11 August 2020
On the side of that argument, it is a very different situation. Kelly is a pitcher and Laureano is a position player. That means he would probably miss six games in which he would have been. Kelly, on the other hand, will probably only miss 3-4 games in which he may have appeared. However, Dodgers fans have the right to marry the suspension in the first place.
Laureano for 5 games seems to me just right. I do not like the comparison with 8 for Joe Kelly because it is ‘every day’ player against ‘reliever’, but it is interesting to see what the league office sees as more irregular crimes.
– Daniel Preciado (@DanJPreciado) 11 August 2020
As of today, there is still a pending appeal to Joe Kelly. The hearing was scheduled to take place on Monday, but there has been no update on it. The Dodgers also put Kelly on the injured list with a shoulder injury.
The good news is that MLB is finally punishing the Astros. Hit coach Alex Cintron was suspended for 20 games for his role in the incident. It is the longest suspension for an on-field incident in 15 years.
Dodgers: Magic Johnson emphasizes need for players not to behave themselves
