What’s ironic is that Jake actually didn’t play the two games after the suspension was issued... but they had went ahead and appealed by that point. If he had just served the suspension then, it would have already been done with.
All of Lucroy was inside the baseline the entire time of the play. You can see his foot never crosses the line and his upper body is always straight vertical above his leg. He gave Jake the outside path - that's all the catcher needs to do. Even if Lucroy hadn't moved at all, Jake would have crashed into his plant leg and caused possibly an even more gruesome injury. Jake juked inside because he *thought* Lucroy was going to move from where he was and go outside. Lucroy never did that. Jake was simply wrong about his guess. Jake also launched himself airborne and shoulder first. Bad decision, not intentional, unfortunate outcome. Baseball is trying to prevent these things, so bad decisions come with suspensions. It's no different than fines and suspensions for helmet-to-helmet hits in football or red cards in soccer (resulting in suspensions), etc. Not all of them are intentional, but if they could have been clearly avoided and are potentially dangerous decisions, they result in penalties.
The guy trying to hit Jake in the head is vastly more egregious than anything that happened on that slide. Everybody got suspended, they deserved it, move on.
I was thinking that Jake’s actions after being hit were enough to warrant a one game reduction. He was showing how things should get handled.
