had already seen a benches-clearing kerfuffle<\/a> and the Dodgers\u2019 third plunking of Padres right fielder Fernando Tatis Jr. in a span of 10 days.<\/p>\nMLB, in announcing the suspension, described Suarez\u2019s 99.8 mph fastball as intentional. Suarez disputed that characterization and opted to appeal his suspension.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just coming in to close out that game,\u201d Suarez said through interpreter Pedro Guti\u00e9rrez on Friday. \u201cI was never trying to run into trouble or hit anybody. Unfortunately, it happened, I got ejected and I couldn\u2019t finish out the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
Suarez remained available to pitch for the Padres in Tuesday\u2019s game against the Washington Nationals. He could begin serving his suspension on Wednesday. The Padres, who are off Thursday, will be limited to carrying 25 players during Suarez\u2019s two-game ban.<\/p>\n
Padres manager Mike Shildt supported Suarez on Friday, calling the plunking of Ohtani unintentional. Amid a tense environment \u2014 both benches and bullpens had cleared when Shildt confronted Dodgers manager Dave Roberts after Tatis took a 93 mph fastball to his right wrist \u2014 Ohtani reacted to being hit on Thursday by waving off his teammates as he walked to first base, seemingly preventing a potential brawl. Ohtani was also hit by a Padres pitcher on Tuesday; a half-inning after Tatis took a fastball in the back, Randy V\u00e1squez plunked Ohtani in the right thigh.<\/p>\n
Suarez was replaced by Yuki Matsui, who went on to record his first major-league save in a 5-3 win for the Padres.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do trust the league office being judicious, but we are taking exception with the three games, the volume of the games and actually (the suspension), period,\u201d Shildt said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a strong appeal to lessen it. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to go away, unfortunately, but at a minimum, lessen the games.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 The Athletic\u2019s Ken Rosenthal contributed to this report.<\/strong><\/p>\n(Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN DIEGO \u2014 Padres closer Robert Suarez will drop his appeal after his suspension for hitting Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2502,1266,1306,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-12693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-san-diego-padres","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114742359690651507","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}