Manny Machado Ripped Into Dan Plesac and Eric "Barnes" Last Night On IG Live

So this is a somewhat deep situation we got on our hands here and I can’t wait to see what that lunatic Eric Byrnes has to say about it, or if he even responds at all.

The funny thing is, it doesn’t even *really* involve him.  Basically Machado is all pissed off that the Angels plunked Jake Marisnick for truck sticking Jonathon Lucroy last week.  It was a BRUTAL hit at home plate.  Video below:

at a glance, it looks bad.  Really fucking bad.  If it weren’t for Marisnick immediately popping up to see if Lucroy was alright, the entire Angels dugout might have charged the field and gone full blown Bear Jew on his face.

Baseball has obviously been pussified recently and baserunners can’t make catch with catcher’s anymore.  But Lucroy’s explanation on how this happened actually did seem somewhat plausible.

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Now do I think it was dirty?  Personally, no.  I think dirty implies intent and I do not think Marisnick intended to impale Lucroy after hearing his explanation and seeing different angles of the play.  I do think he made a boneheaded decision to try and side step Lucroy field side to get around the tag, but it was unintentional nonetheless.  Here’s a good compilation of different angels of the play:

Marisnick was clearly side stepping Lucroy before Lucroy moved to his right to receive the throw.  Unfortunate ending, but Marisnick would have had to have been reading Lucroy’s mind to know he was going to do that.

Obviously the Angels retaliated earlier this week:

Boneheaded mistakes deserve retaliation regardless of intent, and Marisnick took it like a man and just jogged to first.  He knew he fucked up and accepted the punishment.  No mound charging, no punches thrown, no stare downs, nothing.  He handled it perfectly, and this is all after he received a 2 game suspension for his dimwitted slide that took out Lucroy.

Both benches were warned and that was that… kinda.  Benches (kinda) cleared in spite of Marisnick doing his best to defuse the entire situation:

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This is the part of the blog where my objective breakdown turns into subjective opinion.  You don’t throw at someone’s head.  Ever.  You plunk them in the ass at best, the numbers at worst.  Anything shoulders on up and you’re a piece of shit.  Noe Ramirez fucked up worse than Marisnick did IMO.  There was clear and conscious intent with that pitch and it was way too close to his head.

This is also where Machado checks in:

Basically he was watching MLB Net and Eric Byrnes and Dan Plesac were all pissed off that Ramirez went too high and tight too.  But Machado apparently thinks they are underlying racists or something because they’re white dudes who don’t care about pitchers throwing at his or other Latino players’ heads.  They only care when it’s a white guy getting attacked high and tight.

Shortened version here:

Now I love him calling out that lunatic Eric Byrnes and to a lesser extent Dan Plesac for being idiots, but his reasoning behind it…. sucks.  Come on man.  Not everything is an underlying race issue.  Nobody should ever get a 95+ MPH projectile thrown at their heads in a baseball game, but Machado’s reputation as being dirty AF completely waters down his reasoning.  I mean, there’s a full on youtube compilation of him playing dirty too:

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Awesome player, obviously. Dirty player?  You bet your ass.  Fuck outta here Machado.  Nobody cares about you getting drilled because you often bring it upon yourself.  You’d have got 20 games for truck sticking Lucroy because you have a history of doing stupid shit like that already.  Not because you’re Latino.