Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Nobody has ever once said Madson was throwing at him on purpose. Never a single time. Jays included. You've been arguing with ghosts there.
Now please please please explain to me how Donaldson would have had any idea that the pitch from Volquez up and in was a changeup at the moment the incident occured - a pitch that by its very nature is designed to look like a fastball right up to the moment it reaches the plate. If that pitch is coming at your face and you'd just been hit in your last at bat, you're absolutely going to be convinced it's a fastball. The fact that he spun out of the box and didn't escalate things beyond that actually demonstrated a fair amount of self control. And by the end of the AB when he flipped the bat, of course he's still pissed because he still things Volquez threw a fastball at his chin. Every player in professional baseball would still be pissed there.
A changeup isn't like a slider; there's not that tell-tale dot that can give it away. Everything on that pitch apart from what it does in the last 10 feet is going to look exactly like a fastball and by the time the pitch was 10 feet away, Donaldson had already spun out of there because it looked like heat to him. Yes, you're being myopic if you think Donaldson instigated that or that he didn't have cause for his irritation.
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What the **** are you talking about? Yeah, he was a bit spooked, understandably so, but he knew it was a change after the initial impulse of "oh, ****" washed over him.
The last 10 feet? Makes no sense (in baseball terms).
Pretty simple: dude was pumped up and on edge. Pitch (any pitch doesn't ****ing matter) comes close, and he loses his mind. Dude was being driven entirely by emotion and not thinking logically.
It happens. It makes him a ****ing idiot to the rationale world, but it happens.