Josh Donaldson Pulled The Ultimate Bitch Move Last Night

Last night Josh Donaldson hit a piss rod for a bomb off Lucas Giolito to give the Twins a 2-0 lead over the White Sox 4 pitches into the game:

Pretty standard shit. Gio missed his spot, Donaldson teed off. That's baseball, whatever. What wasn't baseball was the move Donaldson pulled as he was crossing home plate:

"It's not sticky anymore!!! It's not sticky anymore!!!"

It was a bitch move, plain and simple. Grow balls and scream your shit talk towards the mound. Don't do it as you run off the field, you bitch. 

Look, I've always liked Josh Donaldson. Dude was an MVP and total superstar for a hot minute. I loved watching him play the game. It's def plausible that I've been living under a rock and he's always been a total cunt, but I don't THINK that's the case. Could be wrong, but now I hate him. 

First off, Lucas Giolito has as good a head on his shoulders as anyone. Says and does the right things, super good dude from a super good family (his dad yucks it up with Sox fans on Twitter all the time) and he works his ass off to be the best pitcher possible for the White Sox. Love the guy to death, as does the rest of the fanbase. But he's not cut from the same cloth as someone like… a Lance Lynn who has a total in your face, fuck you mentality and won't hesitate to shit talk hitters if need be. I don't mean that in a bad way at all, it just doesn't seem that's who Gio is.

That's reason #1 why Donaldson's move was a total bitch move. Shit talk those who also shit talk. Don't pull out your shit talk on those who don't, it makes you, a former MVP/all star look like you're punching down. If he got into it with TA for some other reason? Yeah, I could see that. TA loves to shit talk and get under the opposition's skin. Gio is more workman like and keeps to himself. 

Reason number two? The majority of pitchers in the fucking league were using "sticky stuff" until recently, as referenced by these tweets/graphs: 

We know that using sticky shit helps increase RPMs on any given pitch without affecting velocity. So Gio was more than likely using it as he's been down 200 RPMs or so on his fastball from earlier in the year. Guess what? I don't give a shit, and I don't give a shit about any X pitcher on the 29 other teams in baseball using it. It is what it is. I've said that ad nauseam all summer. 

The data points above mean that you could have bet a pretty hefty sum that a Twins pitcher and more than likely multiple Twins pitchers were also using it though. That's reason #2 that Josh Donaldson can fuck right off. If you're going to be all high and mighty and scream towards your dugout about an opposing pitcher using "sticky stuff" while a few of the starters in that same dugout were also probably using it, you look like an idiot, plain and simple.

And if they weren't using it prior to it being enforced? Then they probably should have been. Perhaps the AL Central standings wouldn't look like this:

Shit talking while you're a 1/2 game from being in dead last through the halfway point of the season while also being considered the favorite to win the division by MANY "experts" prior to the season's start is a BOLD move. It makes you look like a total asshole. Gio said it himself:

Exactly Josh, you clowndick. If you're gonna shit talk, turn around and shit talk Gio right to his face. Don't do it in a way that is going to fire him up so he proceeds to face the minimum amount of batters through the next 18 hitters, literally. Gio CRUISED through the next 5 innings to a dub.

You're not helping your team when you pull a move like that, Joshua. I wish Gio would have taken a page out of Hendriks' Australian playbook and called him a cunt in the presser. Because that's what Donaldson was being: a cunt. I just hope they don't bean him tonight because they can't afford ANY missed time/suspensions with how badly they're beat up with injuries right now. Don't do that White Sox…

Then we get to reason #3 why Donaldson's move was a bitch move, and this might be the most important reason: it is EXACTLY what the owners and Manfred want. We had Ryan Spaeder on RLR two weeks back to talk about how, with the looming CBA expiration, the owners are going to try to drive a wedge between the players in the MLBPA. The easiest way to do this is to divide the pitchers from hitters. Obviously hitters want to tee off every at bat, while pitchers want to strike every hitter. Recently, pitchers were basically doing that with help from the use of sticky shit and with the league's crack down on foreign substances, we're starting to see hitters pipe up:

Kris Bryant had this quote a few weeks back:

And then we had Donaldson pulling his shit last night. Not good. In the grand scheme of things it is probably pretty meaningless, but this is exactly what the owners and league want - the players fighting amongst themselves. That gives the owners/union leverage in CBA negotiations, and they'll use that leverage to squeeze every last cent possible out of the players. It's what they do. That might be me putting my tinfoil hat on to some extent, but to me it makes all the sense in the world to me. 

The ONLY good to come out of this is that it could spark a little rivalry with the Twins again. I wish more than anything the White Sox had a Yankees/Red Sox type rivalry with another AL Central team. To me, it's always cyclical. During the Mauer/Morneau years, I hated the Twins. Loathed them. In the early 2000 days, I hated the Tribe. Loathed that juiced up fuck Travis Haffner. Detroit? Couldn't stand them with Magglio Ordonez, Jimmy Leyland, etc. But it goes year to year for me. Maybe this sparks some decades long rivalry? That'd be sick.

Nevertheless I hope Cease makes Donaldson look completely stupid at the dish tonight. If the Sox sweep the Twins, the Twins will be officially DEAD and should probably sell at the deadline. We'll take Cruz, thank you very much. Fuck that team and fuck Josh Donaldson.