Cardinals fans already know exactly how this goes.
Pitcher hits batter. Sequence escalates. Batter eventually charges. MLB comes out and says, essentially, “we don’t take sides here, everyone gets punished.” Both-sides discipline, applied equally, regardless of who threw a 96-mph fastball into another man’s body two innings before the whole thing exploded.
That’s what happened April 7 in Anaheim. Reynaldo López gave up a homer to Jorge Soler in the 1st — Soler’s fifth career long ball in 23 at-bats against him, which is an absolutely humiliating number for any pitcher to carry. Two innings later, López drilled Soler with a 96-mph fastball. Not incidental. Not a slip. Two innings after getting embarrassed by a guy who owns you statistically. Then in the 5th, López threw up-and-in near Soler’s head. Words got exchanged. Soler charged. Punches were thrown — including from López, who was still gripping the baseball when he started swinging. That image went viral for a reason.
MLB’s response the next day: seven games each.
Then López quietly settled his appeal for five games. With an off-day in the schedule, he didn’t miss a single start. Soler’s appeal was still pending while he kept playing under abeyance. The guy who initiated the whole thing — who hit a batter, buzzed his head, and then punched him while holding the ball — effectively faced zero real-world consequence. Soler, who reacted to all of that, could end up serving the longer actual suspension.
The suspension math is the whole fraud. Seven games for a starting pitcher equals one missed turn in the rotation. Seven games for a position player equals a week out of the lineup. MLB hands out equal game counts knowing full well the outcomes aren’t equal. It’s fake symmetry dressed up as fairness.
Cardinals fans got this same treatment in 2022. Nolan Arenado charged the mound after Yoan López (Mets) threw near his head — itself coming after Cardinals pitcher Genesis Cabrera had hit J.D. Davis with a pitch. Arenado got two games (reduced to one on appeal). López, the pitcher who threw the pitch that sent Arenado charging, received nothing. MLB punished the reaction and let the instigation walk.
There’s a version of this where you give equal suspensions because both guys truly brought it. The 2017 Bryce Harper–Hunter Strickland situation ended with Strickland getting more games than Harper because MLB actually acknowledged who started it. They can do it when they want to. They just usually don’t want to.
Soler said it plainly after the game: “After the home run and getting hit by a pitch after that, and then he missed way too high and close to my head. At this level, you can’t miss like that.”
That’s not a guy who went looking for a fight. That’s a guy who absorbed two innings of escalating retaliation and eventually stopped absorbing it. The Angel Stadium crowd gave him a standing ovation walking off the field after the ejection. Even the opposing fans knew who the wronged party was.
MLB’s unwritten rules exist. Every player knows they exist. The league just refuses to formally acknowledge them when it’s time to hand out punishment — which means pitchers can operate with full knowledge that starting something will cost them roughly the same as finishing it, and position players will always pay the steeper real price for refusing to stand there and take it.
Either enforce it consistently or stop pretending the rules aren’t there.