"There's a price to pay," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said in the clubhouse last weekend after a Tampa Bay pitcher whizzed a fastball alarmingly near Miguel Cabrera's face.
A Rays batter felt that price on his arm the next day, it was widely assumed when Rick Porcello threw one there in the first inning Sunday.
Rick Porcello draws a league penalty for what's seen as next-day retaliation.
Porcello also pays, it turns out. His price is an undisclosed fine and six-game suspension, imposed after league executives concluded he meant to hit second baseman Ben Zobrist.
The penalties are Leland's fault, in the view of Oakland Press writer Matthew B. Mowery.
All [he] did was shine a big spotlight on everything and anything that Porcello did Sunday afternoon.
He could’ve gone the route taken by his slugger, Cabrera, who — despite being accused of “crying” by the Rays the next day — didn’t say anything inflammatory after the game.
Instead, Leyland went off in one of his patented tirades. . . .
Leyland set up Porcello — who at worst was just trying to be a good teammate — to have to take the fall by making a big deal about the need for retaliation before it happened.
Mowery is unfazed by Porcello's predictable action and thinks Leyland's 90-second rant to the media threw his hit man under the bus needlessly.
It's an unwritten rule: You mess with our guy, we’ll mess with yours. It happens.
But it probably should go unspoken, too. And it should be handled on the field, not in front of cameras.
