The Los Angeles Angels had Jorge Soler for a week after his brawl with Reynaldo Lopez, but now his suspension begins.
The appeal process for a suspension is both clunky and slow in MLB, and it allowed Jorge Soler to stay on the field for a week after his mound-charging incident and subsequent brawl with pitcher Reynaldo Lopez of the Atlanta Braves last week.
But the hammer finally fell tonight, and now Soler will miss tonight’s game against the New York Yankees as his suspension was reduced from seven to four games, according to a report from Darragh McDonald of MLBTradeRumors.com via Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register.
The clunky part of the process is that news of Lopez’s suspension came down before Soler’s did, rather than via a simultaneous announcement. The slow part is about Soler being on the field, but the Angels certainly won’t complain about that given the multiple home runs he hit while being allowed to stay in the lineup.
The incident was more serious than the usual baseball fight. It started with a Soler home run in the first inning when the Angels played the Braves last week, and Lopez proceeded to hit Soler in his next at-bat. His third featured an inside fastball that whizzed over Soler’s head, and a staring match ensued.
That probably should have been the end of it, but instead the brawl happened. Soler took a tentative step or two toward the mound, and Lopez extended his arms in a “come get me” gesture. Soler then charged the mound, and both players began throwing haymakers.
It’s still rather amazing that no one was hurt in all this. Most of the players tried to play peacemaker and protect their respective teammates, but Atlanta manager Walt Weiss turned up in the middle of one of the scrums and wound up tackling Soler.
Fortunately, the two men have a relationship based on their time together when Soler was in Atlanta, but the suspensions here would have been very different if Soler had gotten injured when Weiss tackled him.
If you’re keeping score on who got the worst of this, that would probably be Soler by a small margin. Lopez will miss one start after his suspension was reduced from seven games to five, while Soler will miss the final two games of the Angels series against the Yankees, along with two more when the Halos host the Padres this weekend for a three-game set.
Neither team will be allowed to substitute players during the respective suspensions, so the Angels will be short-handed for a bit. Soler’s slash line so far is .231/.342/.508, but the outcome could have been far worse for both players and teams.