Aroldis Chapman, the new New York Yankees flamethrowing closer, has been suspended for 30 games for his involvement in a domestic violence incident. The common narrative for the incident is that Chapman become angry with his significant other, pushed her against a wall and then went to his garage to cool off. In the process of cooling off, he fired 8 rounds from his handgun into the garage wall, prompting a call to the police. The girlfriend had no marks on her when police arrived and there were no charges filed in conjunction with the incident. These circumstances are important as MLB laid the precedent for its new domestic violence policy. It seems that MLB got this one right.
We posted about the need for MLB to get this one right back in December, when Daisy Letendre laid out the argument for why MLB had a chance to step above the NFL’s crumbling moral ground. It seems that the MLB has done that here.
This first incident was not without it’s nuances, as each of these cases tend to be. Chapman never struck his partner, the shots were not fired in her direction, and the police investigation unveiled little-to-no major wrongdoing on Chapman’s part. Still, MLB levied a 30 game suspension effectively taking chapman out for 2/11ths of the year.
What will be most interesting is how the MLB handles the Jose Reyes incident. It appears obvious that each of these incidences should be handled and judged on their own individual set of circumstances, but grading out how “bad” each incident is also has its problems. How does one measure the psychological damage of domestic assault? How does one domestic “push” relate to another? There’s no real way to win in dealing with these things. Each wrongdoing should be met with a firm punishment and MLB set a solid benchmark by suspending Chapman for 30 games.
-Sean Morash
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