Jake

Glad to see Reynaldo backing up the play there

Just goes to show you why he shouldn't be slacking!

Lopez missing everything up and in

Don't know why he has but it seems like Welington has decided to mail it in

Watching Tyler Flowers the other day I noticed he does that a lot, which seems bad but of course you can't argue with his results.

I think the only place you could argue is it may be the case that Jose Rondon has leapfrogged Yolmer, but that depends on how much of Yolmer's brutal start is just an anomaly and of course we're not totally sure what Rondon is going to be.

107mph, just gotta get the launch angle now

Finally catches a break

I wish mean old Coop hadn't made Rodon terrible

Finally hit 92 (91.5 per Statcast). Averaging 89.5 thus far

So Rodon is not throwing very hard...

The NFL a couple years ago decided to make it a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty when players said the N word (I think it is presumed that if white or other non-black players say it, the eventual penalties would be more severe) and suspensions were possible for repeat offenders. They rolled out this policy in coordination with and with advice from black executives and players. MLB had to come up with a punishment on the spot for this and I just don't like the optics of suspending Tim when he'd already been booted from the game. This is all in the context of a situation instigated by a pitcher trying to hurt him.

I'm of the general belief that MLB is a very well run league that makes a ton of money relative to the size of its fanbase and has done a great job of modernizing their media presence, etc. So as far as I'm concerned I don't see it as part of a narrative of terrible management, but they've really bungled this.

Like I've said all along, I'm happy for MLB to decide they want to stop all players from saying it. But springing this policy on a black player who had just been antagonized with no known prior history of problematic language usage just makes no sense. If they just fined him nobody would care. Bear in mind he was already ejected from a tight game for using the word.

MLB looks so stupid here. They take this thing that caused days of unproductive debate and now tack on this, which will move the debate into much more controversial territory

If there is no explicit policy about this, and Tim used the n-word, I don't see any justification to suspend him when nobody knew it was against the rules. And yes I think it would be fair to have a double-standard in which Keller would be punished much, much more harshly if he used the N word at Tim's expense (or at all)

Is it possible he used a slur towards Latino players? I doubt it, but worth considering

It's possible I'm giving MLB way too much benefit of the doubt to assume they're punishing over the N word and not the word that refers to something you can put in your soup

I can go along with a policy against it, but it would be news to me if there is one. I don't think this would be the time to create one.

FYI the NFL started penalizing players for saying the N word (at least in earshot of the refs) a couple years ago