Minor League TV Broadcasts Make Determining Brawl Punishments Easier

Tip to prospective baseball brawlers: you’re better off causing mayhem in the Florida State or California Leagues.

As MiLB.tv has spread, it’s becoming easier for minor league presidents to mete out justice when a scuffle gets out of hand. Just a decade ago, after a minor league brawls, the league president would interview the umpires who called the game (and who were in the middle of the fight trying to break it up) and the players and coaches involved. And understandably, there would be confusion about who did what.

But now as Midwest League president Richard Nussbaum reviews the Dayton-West Michigan brawl from Sunday night, he has multiple eyes in the sky to help his decision. The Dayton Dragons produce a high definition broadcast of every home game. So Nussbaum can watch multiple angles of the pushing and shoving in HD. He can slow it to go frame-by-frame to see who did what, using software provided by Minor League Baseball’s Umpire Development program.

“It really helps us,” Nussbaum said. “We have really good video. It’s very valuable.”

There are still places where getting video footage of a brawl would be difficult–the Florida State League and Cal League each have one team that broadcasts their home games. But as more HD-quality video boards are installed around the minors, it adds multiple camera crews to the gameday staff. And when the video is available it becomes vital information in determining who will be punished.

The video from the Dayton-West Michigan fight shows much of the incident step-by-step. It shows West Michigan shortstop Daniel Pinero stepping on Dayton baserunner Jose Siri’s leg as he walks away from second base.

West Michigan shortstop Daniel Pinero spiked Dayton’s Jose Siri which led to a benches-clearing brawl.

Later the video showed a West Michigan pitcher throwing a baseball at a Dayton player. The Dayton Dragons report from the game identified the player as Eduardo Jimenez.

A West Michigan player threw a baseball that hit Dayton’s Jesse Stallings during Sunday night’s brawl. (Source: Dayton Dragons/MILB.tv)

Nussbaum said he expects to rule on discipline stemming from the brawl in the next couple of days. The Midwest League does not announce suspensions. Teams are welcome to if they prefer to, although the transactions themselves make it easy to figure out who was the most punished after any incident.