SUSPENSION LIKELY TO WEIGH ON ODOR
Rangers’ Banister backs player as team-first guy
“He’s such a team player, does everything to be able to play for the team. He runs hard and slides hard for the team, plays hard for the team.” Rangers manager Jeff Banister, on Rougned Odor
The harsh exterior opponents often see comes forth when Rougned Odor talks publicly about the events that have landed him in the spotlight the last few days, as he purses his lips and speaks in clipped sentences, be it in English or Spanish.
The Texas Rangers second baseman, who grew up in a baseball family and says he started playing at 2, is not about to share his inner feelings about possibly having to sit out eight games, pending an appeal of the suspension he was handed Tuesday by Major League Baseball.
“I want to be with my team all year. I don’t want to be out for eight games,” is as expansive as Odor would get about the ordeal he has been involved in since punching the Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista in a game Sunday, sparking a huge brawl that resulted in 14 participants getting disciplined.
Those who deal with Odor on a regular basis, though, realize the impact this experience is having on the 22-year-old Venezuelan.
His name is suddenly synonymous with a wicked right cross, not with his team-leading seven home runs. The image of Odor pounding Bautista’s jaw gets played much more frequently than highlights of him pounding a fastball. Rather than Odor jerseys, folks are buying T-shirts with a silhouette of his punch sending Bautista’s helmet and sunglasses airborne.
“Odor is handling everything the best he can,” Rangers manager Jeff Banister said before Tuesday’s game against the Oakland Athletics, which Odor played in but shortstop Elvis Andrus did not as he served a one-game suspension for his role in the fracas.
“I probably take it a little harder when I read and see the comments and I see the words ‘dirty player’ attached to Rougned Odor and I think about what I know about Rougie. He’s such a team player, does everything to be able to play for the team. He runs hard and slides hard for the team, plays hard for the team, to win for the team. It’s never individualized for him.”
That is part of the reason it must bother Odor to know his team, which went into Tuesday’s play tied for first place in the American League West, will have to play a man short and miss his contributions during his absence.
Asked whether he could learn something from the experience, Odor said in Spanish, “What am I going to learn?”
Maybe the answer is how quickly a reputation gets established and how long it takes to change it. Odor was involved in a similar altercation five years ago in the minors, and video of both brawls has been playing in clubhouses all over the majors.
Odor, who has developed a reputation for playing with an edge and on the edge, could make a point that in both cases his ac- tions were justified.
In the minor league altercation, his team had been hit by pitches several times before the then-17-year-old second baseman tried to break up a double play by taking out Vancouver Canadians shortstop Shane Opitz, who objected and was promptly met by a shove and then a blow from Odor.
Sunday, Bautista seemed to be spoiling for a fight when, after getting plunked in the eighth inning in apparent retaliation for his epic bat flip in last October’s playoffs, he slid late into second base and popped up looking back at Odor.
Odor’s picture-perfect right cross to Bautista’s jaw will earn him a few admirers, especially among those who might find the Toronto star too full of himself and in need of comeuppance for the bat flip.
But those are bound to be a minority. For the larger baseball community, Odor figures to be a marked man, a player whose actions might draw extra scrutiny, requiring a delicate balance between playing with emotion and control. MLB made it clear who it deemed the instigator by suspending Bautista for one game.
“Does he need to walk a fine line?” Banister said, repeating a reporter’s question. “What do we want to do, take his personality and passion away from him, and now he’s not the same player? It’s how he plays the game. He plays it hard, he runs hard, he swings the bat, he does things to try to help his team win baseball games.”
In an interview with USA TODAY Sports late last season, Odor said that’s how he learned to play from his father, also Rougned, who scouted in his native Venezuela for the Cleveland Indians for nine years. The senior Rougned’s brother, Rouglas Odor, is the hitting coach for the Indians’ Class AAA team.
Three other uncles on Odor’s mother’s side played in the Venezuelan winter league, where former major leaguers such as Richard Hidalgo and Edgardo Alfonzo coached Odor as he quickly emerged as a top prospect, reaching the big leagues in 2014 three months after his 20th birthday. He was the youngest player in the majors that season.
All along, Odor played with a high degree of confidence and aggressiveness.
“That’s my playing style. I can’t change the way I play. If I did, everything would be different,” Odor said, pointing out that his father taught him to “be aggressive, break up double plays, play hard but clean. Break up double plays with your legs, not your spikes.”
Veterans such as third baseman Adrian Beltre and Andrus, his countryman, have taken Odor under their wing, advising him on how to prosper at the game’s top level.
They were impressed with the way he bounced back from batting .144 through May 8 of last season, which earned him a fiveweek demotion to the minors. After his June 15 return, Odor batted .292 with 15 homers and a .861 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, helping the Rangers surge to the AL West crown.
He was again one of the Rangers’ top performers and their unquestioned spark plug this season, so his absence will be felt.
“He’ll take it very much to heart,” Rangers assistant general manager Thad Levine said. “He’s not the type of person who’s celebrating this in any way, shape or form. But I think his attention now is turned to trying to help his team win in the short term, because he realizes he won’t be with them for a period of time in the next week or so.”