What a very strange weekend between the Oakland Athletics and the Baltimore Orioles.

On Friday, Manny Machado from the Orioles lost his cool after being tagged out by Josh Donaldson. There was no logical reason for him to lose his temper.

Later on that game, Donaldson was then hit by a pitch. That may have been the Orioles’ form of retaliation even though it appeared Donaldson did nothing wrong in tagging out Machado.

No other retaliation occurred in the game and the following game went on without incident.

Then on Sunday, Machado struck catcher Derek Norris twice in the game on his backswing. The second time forced Norris to exit the game and Machado never showed concern. Norris claims that he even saw Machado smile afterward.

The A’s weren’t too happy about that and later in the game, it appeared that reliever Fernando Abad was going to send a message. After firing one pitch really close inside to Machado, Abad on his next pitch did the same thing and this happened.

Machado and Abad were ejected and that was that.

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Even though I am an American League guy, I don’t know enough about Machado. I have only seen his play on the field but up to this point, I didn’t know what his personality was like. This weekend was my first glimpse of what kind of person he is. He might be a good person and this weekend was just a bad example of who he is. Or maybe it’s the only example I needed.

I know how great of a player he is and I was really sad to see him get hurt last year. However, if this kind of attitude is a true reflection of who he is, I don’t want to cheer for him ever.

There is nothing that he did that I can defend. Losing his cool after getting tagged out makes no sense. The reaction (or lack of reaction) to those backswings that hit the catcher was very strange. Then the very obvious intent to throw the bat at Abad really shocked me.

What’s up with this guy?

MLB will have to suspend him at least. But this causes me to find major concern about what potential disasters await him in the future. There are already talks about him being the next Milton Bradley. Is he that ticking time bomb that could go off any second? I hope not. But this weekend doesn’t really give me much other opinions.

Does Machado think he has entitlement to something? Regardless, this all could have been avoided if he didn’t lose his cool on Friday after getting tagged out. But he did, held a grudge and this happened.

The Orioles need to be very careful with him and hopefully find some kind of way to get this guy on the right path. He can’t continue on his career as a baseball player who has ill intent. Players won’t hold back if he continues this.