Sunday’s Angels-Mariners brawl was one of the ugliest we’ve seen in a while, but here’s the real kicker: it was also entirely preventable. All it would have taken was for the umpiring crew to be even halfway competent in their jobs, recognize what every single other person in the building, down to the peanut vendors, seemingly knew was coming, and issue a warning to both benches pre-game. They then should have immediately ejected Andrew Wantz the second he hit Julio Rodríguez. Then Wantz isn’t in the game to hit Winker, and a whole different series of events unfold.
Much of the fan-assigned blame has fallen on home plate umpire John Bacon, a Triple-A umpire up as a vacation replacement, but this whole umpiring crew—Bacon, Rob Drake, Will Little, and Adrian Johnson—bears the brunt of responsibility for not recognizing the overall situation, nor the Angels’ intent to act on that situation by making a late substitution to use an “opener”, and not immediately issuing warnings and then immediately ejecting Wantz.