Major League Baseball today still hadn’t announced the results of Carlos Gomez‘s appeal of a three-game suspension levied for his actions during an on-field incident on Sunday, April 20 in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. So Gomez took the decision out of the arbitrator’s hands.
Gomez, who left the May 13 game early with lower back tightness, decided to drop the appeal of his suspension and begin serving all three games tonight. Gomez had appealed the length of the suspension immediately and finally had his hearing via video conference on Friday, May 9. The decision on whether to uphold his appeal was already several days in as the circumstances were seemingly carefully considered.
Unfortunately we’ll never know if Gomez would have had the suspension reduced. The timing works out for Gomez because even if he only sat out tonight with back spasms and MLB finally levied a reduced two-game suspension, Gomez would have missed the next three games anyway. And then you run the risk that they don’t reduce it or Gomez still isn’t healthy enough to play tomorrow and then he’d miss even more than three games.
Besides, in opinion it would make sense after the suspensions of Travis Snider (two games) and Russell Martin (one game) were upheld in appeal that Gomez wasn’t getting out without at least two games of his own. I didn’t see much of a way that Gomez — a principal arguer along with Gerrit Cole — would get fewer games than Snider despite Snider’s aggressive actions really inciting the physicality of the kerfuffle.
Bottom line, Gomez will miss the next two games against the Pittsburgh Pirates as well as Friday’s series opener at Wrigley Field. As they did when Martin Maldonado served his five-game suspension, the Brewers are forced to play those games down Gomez’s roster spot. They cannot replace him on the 25-man roster while he’s suspended.
So now that all of the fallout from the Easter Sunday skirmish has been meted out, and the teams have met on the field as well, this really should be a thing of the past.
Well, at least until Gerrit Cole gives up a tape measure blast and somebody pimps the hell out of it. I’m personally hoping that Mark Reynolds does the duty if Gomez doesn’t first. (I’m all for a full on Rickey Henderson job too, for the record.)
And if you don’t know what that is, here’s a little taste…
