Royals people will tell you that right-hander Yordano Ventura is a diligent worker, one of the team’s most regimented pitchers. He is engaged between starts, watches film, works on pitches, looks and acts the part.
The Ventura who received a seven-game suspension last April for triggering a series of on-field incidents … that guy, it seemed, had disappeared. The bigger issue of late was Ventura’s performance, the 4.82 ERA that he carried into Tuesday night’s start — and swelled to 5.32 during a game in which he drilled Manny Machado and triggered an ugly brawl during a 9-1 loss to the Orioles at Camden Yards.
We can debate conduct and intent, but Ventura’s performance, at least in the big picture, is still the issue. The Royals need him to be their ace, needed him to stop their five-game losing streak Tuesday night. Nothing of the sort happened. Instead, all of the old questions about Ventura emerged, questions for which the Royals have no answers.
Machado was not blameless; he can be on the touchy side himself. The Royals’ plan was to pitch him inside, then throw breaking balls down and away. Machado seemed to take offense on balls that were in, but did not hit him, in his second at-bat. He then ripped a drive to left that he thought was a homer, admired it, only to see the ball get knocked down by the wind and caught.
An exchange of words between Machado and Ventura followed, though it’s not clear who started yapping first. The entire Royals’ dugout reacted, according to sources, ticked off both by Machado’s body language and verbal response. Orioles manager Buck Showalter said he gave Machado a heads-up in the dugout, telling him to expect trouble in his next at-bat. The brawl was that predictable, that inevitable. And for Ventura, that sad.
The kid is 25 now. This is his third full season. The Royals have tried coddling him, supporting him, protecting him. Oh, they demoted him when he was struggling last July, but his minor-league stint did not even last a day after lefty Jason Vargas went on the DL.
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