Drama was high in Detroit Thursday afternoon, when benches cleared between the Yankees and the Tigers not once, not twice, but three separate times.
In a bizarre series of events that included balls being thrown behind batters, eight ejections, a scuffle between teammates Justin Verlander and Victor Martinez, and Detriot’s James McCann getting beaned in the head by a pitch, the one episode that was most controversial occurred when Miguel Cabrera shoved Yankees back-up catcher Austin Romine, which resulted in a full-on, bench-clearing fist fight between the two. Yankees All-Star Gary Sanchez found himself in the center of the brawl — and proceeded to start punching both Cabrera and Nick Castellanos, who were both on the ground.
Watch Gary Sanchez (24) come in and stick Miggy with an uppercut pic.twitter.com/fn8e3Acd6t
— MLBdreampicks (@MLBdreampicks) August 24, 2017
It was a poor decision on Sanchez’s behalf, who is now almost surely to be suspended right as New York makes a run for the playoffs. Major League Baseball has yet to announce any suspension news on behalf of the brawl.
Mike Krukow joined Murph and Mac Friday morning, where he was adamantly vocal about his opinion about the game itself and on Gary Sanchez’s decisions on Thursday.
“I thought it was one of the worst examples of an umpire mishandling a game,” Krukow said. “It completely got out of hand. You’re lucky guys did end up getting really hurt. I mean Dellin Betances hit a guy in the head at 98 miles per hour. In the freaking head!
“And then you had Gary Sanchez, who was taking pot shots out of nowhere. That’s going to cost this guy a long time. This is a significant thing in the Yankees 2017 season because some big players are going to go out for a while. What Gary Sanchez did was the most sickening thing I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve seen it before, I’ve seen guys sucker punch guys, but he was hitting guys on the ground. He was coming back into the fray hitting guys on the ground and that cannot happen. That is weak and you can’t even explain it. You can’t even say ‘Oh I lost my mind, I don’t know what I was thinking.’ You’re cheap-shotting a guy who’s down. I don’t even know if he was hitting him in the face — he could’ve been hitting him in the back of the head.”
The Yankees are 4.5 games back from the Red Sox in the AL East and are clinging to a 3.5 game lead in the AL Wild Card. The 24-year-old Sanchez has been pivotal to their success, playing in 93 games this season with a .278 batting average, 27 home runs and 74 RBI.
“The whole thing was ridiculous.” Krukow added. “I do think the umpires let this one get away and it’s going to be really interesting to see how this plays out the rest of the season. It could ruin their season.”
Listen to the full podcast below. To hear Krukow on Sanchez, skip to 0:21.
