Adolis García hit a cool playoff home run yesterday, and Adolis García celebrated accordingly, with a triumphant trot around the bases that at points was also a stand, and at points was also a stare, and at points was a triumphant walk. The next time he came to the plate, Houston Astros pitcher Bryan Abreu hit him with a 99-mph fastball. High and tight.
There’s a lot of plausibility within the Astros’ denial of intent. Using the eighth inning of a playoff game to hit a batter would be a bold move, especially when trailing by two runs with the ALCS tied two games to two. At the same time, the Astros’ win probability was down to 5% before the hit by pitch and only dropped to 4% after benches cleared. After the game, Jose Altuve credited the incident with firing the Astros up before their ninth-inning comeback, while Bruce Bochy lamented what the delay did to José Leclerc, who waited a long time in the dugout before coming out for the ninth. There are a few indicators the drilling might have been intentional, and that’s before considering the elephant in the room: Dusty Baker is a weird, weird dude.
Dusty Baker is a media darling, someone with all the ingredients of a great sports story and enough participation in baseball history to receive a kind light by default. He’s also known for double standards (he can cuss at pitchers from the dugout, but pitchers can’t cuss at hitters when they stare the pitcher down post-strikeout), and he’s known for making excuses (mold was the culprit behind Baker’s fifth straight opening round playoff flameout), and his current team is known for an aggressive self-serving moral code (Framber Valdez’s body language after hitting Marcus Semien this summer looked like John McCain bowing in Hanoi). For some in baseball media, Dusty Baker always deserves the benefit of the doubt. I’d love to understand how they’ve arrived at that conclusion.
I don’t really think Dusty Baker ordered Abreu to hit García, and I don’t think Martín Maldonado ordered it either, though his decision to turn heel this year has been curious, and he does seem to be Baker’s right-hand man, at least to hear Astros fans tell it. But I don’t think a lot of these things are intentional. I think teams talk about these things in the spring and in the summer, in general, vague, deniable terms. I think instances of specific ordered headhunting give impressions of the circumstances under which future headhunting is expected. I think it’s believable that a 26-year-old reliever, one who became a fulltime big leaguer in the Astros’ first post-scandal, post-Covid season, could believe hitting García was something he’s supposed to do.
The umpires did make the right decisions, and Marvin Hudson’s blocking on García as he yelled at Maldonado was one of the best umpire scenes in years. I want to see Marvin Hudson blocking Adolis García in playoff montages and in memes for decades and decades to come. But the ejections: The best way to stop a thing like this from escalating is to eject those likely to be responsible and keep it somewhat balanced. Show the offended parties that you’re taking it seriously, deter anything from getting out of hand if the score gets out of hand (had the Rangers scored four runs that inning and no one been ejected, the fight probability in the top of the ninth would have been as high as you ever see it). I’m disappointed they did this—you’d prefer to see Bruce Bochy put Dusty Baker in a headlock and make him repent for his sins under the threat of televised wedgie—but the umps made the smart call. The playoffs are usually a time to tread cautiously around ejections, but this wasn’t one of those times. If the goal was to deter violence. Again, I don’t agree with that goal—this is a pro-violence blog, within the realm of baseball—but I understand where crew chief James Hoye was coming from.
What happens in Game 6? It depends if there’s a blowout. It depends who all gets hit, and by what kinds of pitches. I don’t get the idea Bochy wants his team to take any physical revenge, but I don’t know what other Rangers want. I have no idea why the Astros would think they owe the Rangers some fastballs in the ribs, but there’s a lot I don’t understand about how the Astros view the world. That starts with Dusty Baker. Dusty Baker is a weird, weird dude.
Note: A previous version of this post implied José Leclerc entered the game in the ninth inning. He did not. He entered in the eighth, facing one batter before the Rangers came to bat and the García incident occurred.
