Houston Astros: How MLB should discipline Yuli Gurriel’s offensive gesture

The Houston Astros have taken a commanding 2-1 lead in the World Series after an incredible performance against the Los Angeles Dodgers but it was an unfortunate incident involving Yuli Gurriel that will overshadow their performance.

The Houston Astros looked like themselves once again where the offense was robust and the pitching was dominant.  The team managed to amass 12 hits in their 5-3 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers.  It seemed as if everything went right as all of the variables needed were put together to have this take the momentum out of this series.

It was also noticeable that being back within the friendly confines of Minute Maid Park certainly helped the Houston Astros situation as our fans, once they see a winner, will lend their full support to their success.  Not to mention that when the roof is closed — to which I’d expect it to be this series — it gives an unbelievable advantage because it’s so loud inside the stadium.

That certainly worked last night.  But as we all celebrated and revered the way the Houston Astros won last night, there was an unfortunate event that occurred with one of our players.

Yes, I’m talking about Yuli Gurriel.  After being the member of the Astros to strike first with his homer out to the Crawford Boxes, giving the team a 1-0 lead, he celebrated in dugout but eventually invoked facial gesture to squint his eyes, likely in mockery of Asian pitcher Yu Darvish, who he hit the home run off of.

Here’s a clip of the gesture from Josh Sanchez, a former FanSided.com Editor:

It’s absolutely clear that he did this intentionally because I don’t think one would be rubbing their eyes for joy in that manner.

Darvish did also tweet last night with a call for all to unify — he confirmed what Yuli did was wrong but stopped short of calling him a racist:

It’s expected that the league will dole out some type of punishment with all of the negative publicity that has come out as of late.  Commissioner Rob Manfred will be speaking with Gurriel today in regard to the incident and I’d fully expect that he’ll suspended for at least one game, possibly two.  I’m sure Dodgers fans want him suspended for the rest of the series but that’s too severe.  He apologized for what he did and it’s time to move on.

In fact, Gurriel did spend part of the 2014 season with the Yokohama Bay Stars, which are part of the Japan Central League in his younger days.  There was no evidence of racial epithets then so I just honestly think that this was a severe lack of poor judgement.  I certainly don’t think that Gurriel is a racist.

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I think he should be suspended at least one game for this but to banish him for the series would be a bit too much as I’ve mentioned above.  But we’ll be finding out soon on what the MLB plans to do about this situation.

Now it’s time to play the waiting to see if we’ll have our dynamic first baseman tonight.

Go Astros.