Mound Visits: You know who we are, cause we brawlin’ all over the world

The first rule of Brawl Club is that everyone talks about “playing the game the right way” for a few hours afterwards and then keeps imagined controversies going for a few days just for kicks. That was the theme of baseball this week as we had not one, but two brawls to break down, plus a close-call but not a full-on brawl between Yadier Molina and Torey Lovullo.

This week’s Mound Visits covers all of that plus some non-fight moments you might have missed this week.

On Monday, the Cubs and White Sox both had home games. The North Sides decided to postpone their home opener, while the South Siders pushed through, cleared the snow, and decided to play their game against the Rays despite the snow blanketing their entire field.

Of course, the split decision spurred some “strong vs. weak” rhetoric between the two fan bases but the real winner of the day (besides the White Sox ground crew, who did yeoman’s work clearing the snow) was the scoreboard operator at Guaranteed Rate Field.

If teams are going to have to continue playing in the snow and cold deep into April, causing hamstring strains and tweaked muscles all over the league, than it’s only fair that teams commit to the jokes.

You Wearin’ A Cup? Cool Just Checking

This happened days ago, and we still don’t really have a good explanation for why Miguel Cabrera took it upon himself to cup check Jason Kipnis while they were both hanging out at first base.

There are still many questions here — What was that post-game conversation like? Does Cabrera ever do that to his own teammates? Does Kipnis sometimes forget to wear a cup and the whole league knows that about him? We’ll probably never know for sure, and maybe it’s better as a mystery.

Max Scherzer is one of the best pitchers in baseball, and this week he broke out a skill no one knew he had in his arsenal: stealing.

Fleetfoot Max over here wasn’t content to just dominate on the mound (he struck out 10 that night) but had to get crafty on the base paths too. What else are you hiding, Scherzer?

Reds’ second baseman Scooter Gennett changed his number this year, from 4 to 3, because he’s a fan of Dale Earnhardt who famously drove the 3 car. Dale Jr. noticed, and gave Gennett’s fandom and number change a shoutout on Twitter. There’s not much to this besides sports being cool, but sometimes sports are just cool is all.

In the sixth inning of the Royals’ game against the Angels, they decided to intentionally walk Shohei Ohtani. Which seemed strange if not entirely unreasonable. There was only one person on base, and even though Ohtani has been raking this season, KC was only down 1-0 at that point. So it seemed overly cautious at the time. But one inning later ...

OK, yeah, your instincts were correct, Kansas City. Fear the Great and Powerful Ohtani for he will rake against anyone.

As if the Marlins and former team owner Jeffrey Loria being sued by the county they call home wasn’t ridiculous enough, now ownership is attempting to go all Wolf of Wall Street and use the British Virgin Islands — notorious tax haven — as a way to force the case to be heard by a federal judge and hopefully get that judge to rule the case could be settled by arbitration.

They’re arguing the company that owns the company that owns the company that owns the team is a BVI citizen, which is the such a Hail Mary cockamamie legal strategy they should be repeating the actual Hail Mary prayer while they file their motions. It’s so strangely impressive that someone should name an underdog Kentucky Derby horse Marlins Cockamamie Legal Strategy. That horse would have a better chance of winning than the Marlins in this case, but it’s a fun name.

We’re getting into serious Bond villain territory here, except for that this strategy is the one used by the red herring villain who gets killed one-third of the way through the movie but not before he easily gives up everything he knows about the real, legitimately dangerous villain.

This fight got slightly overshadowed by the bench-clearing brawls later in the week (because Saturday night every night this week is alright for fighting) but that doesn’t make it any less contentious.

Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo came out to argue balls and strikes and obliquely called Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina a motherf***er in the process, which Molina didn’t take too kindly to. That led to one team’s catcher attacking another team’s manager which doesn’t happen too often without it being in the middle of an already started brawl.

You can get my full breakdown of Padres vs. Rockies right here, but it’s been two days and my assessment still stands that Nolan Arenado’s hair is the true MVP of this brawl. The flow!

The rivalry between the Yankees and Red Sox returned in top form Wednesday, with jerseys torn and blood spilled and Joe Kelly looking someone caught him turning from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. You can find the best moments of the brawl here.

One prime moment that wasn’t fully apparent in the heat of the fight was one that occurred between Red Sox manager Alex Cora and Yankees third base coach Phil Nevin. Nevin yelled at Cora, and Cora yelled back at him. Which would be almost standard if it didn’t also involve Cora extensively motioning at Nevin to get back in his box.

This is the “go home and get your f***ing shine box” of manager yelling matches. It didn’t level up to something worse ... yet. But there are a lot of games between the two teams left and since they were both involved in this rivalry as players something tells me it is absolutely escalating eventually.

Cora made a halfhearted apology in the aftermath, which seems right because the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry with heartfelt apologies isn’t the rivalry at its best.

Have a Mound Visit candidate you don’t want me to miss? Tweet me your favorites and I’ll include them in next week’s column.